


life's a birdcage, baby, and i was meant to fly

by carlemon



Series: Neibolt Restaurant, Café, and Organic Grocers' [1]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (Derry is fundamentally not Derry as they're all more or less city slickers.), Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Flatmates, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Idiots in Love, Multi, Mutual Pining, Not Beta Read, Post-Recovery Fic, References to Depression, Slow Burn, Unspecified Setting, We're All Well-Adjusted and Friends Down Here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-10 07:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 50,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12907065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carlemon/pseuds/carlemon
Summary: As a rule, Stan tries not to entertain Richie, tries his very best to hold out ‘til the very end. As a result, Richie almost always wins. The thing is, he knows what the little one—Eddie—orders, because he’s been ordering the same set of things for months, even since before he started bringing his friend to Neibolt. Chickpea chile verde and cashew crema and frothy hot chocolates—”can I get the marshmallows on the side?”—in winter; smoked mushrooms and sweetcorn, romesco and fava and a carrot juice in summer. It’s a major source of angst for Vic, who he apparently has history with, who frequently and bitterly voices what he’d like to do to Eddie for all his careful scrutiny of and bitching regarding dishes he doesn’t evenmake.Eddie's friend is different, which is to say, a normal person, if not for the fact that he won't stop trying to sneak glances at Stan over his menu.That one where Stan is a waiter saving up for a year abroad, Mike's the new guy, and Richie won't stop hassling their regulars, one of whom has avery obvious thingfor Stan.(stenbrough with reddie and handon elements + established benverly and other ships.)





	1. Chapter 1

There’s a special place in hell, Stan thinks, for whoever bears the responsibility of designing the snooze button. Punctuality’s never been particularly high on the list of his priorities, (the top tiers of which are reserved for dressing himself with the lights on, cooking his own food at least bi-weekly, and effectively divvying his daily quota for social interaction between Richie and— everyone else, _all tasks easier said than done)_ and hell if Richie isn’t late every second day, but, still— he can’t afford to lose this job. He _won’t_ lose this job. Waiting on tables isn’t enjoyable by a long shot, but, as he’d quickly found out, one’s usefulness was not at all defined by _interest,_ no matter how avid _._ Twelve-year-old Stanley’d dreamed of travelling the world, spanning entire continents in weeks with only a sketchbook in which to paste discarded plumage of fantastical birds: agami herons in Panama, secretary birds in Sudan, kakapo and tomtits in New Zealand. Fifteen-year-old Stanley’d briefly entertained the thought of applying as a part-timer at the local zoo.

Just-turned twenty-year-old Stanley, appropriately disenchanted by the prospect of cowering to Greta Bowie and her stepfather’s pharmacy to fund aforementioned childhood hopes and dreams, now waits on tables. It could be, he figures somewhat bitterly, worse.

But not much.

He arrives at Neibolt a little past ten, barely five minutes late. Another five minute are spent tethering his bike to the employee rack, next to Richie’s riot-red monstrosity; (the last time he’d left it unchained, Vic Criss’d stolen it for a ride around the block during his break, returning it with busted spokes and a warped wheel; Stan had been an approximate _four seconds_ away from calling the police on him) another, trying to unjam the door to the back entrance. In the end, he has to bodily throw himself by the shoulder to get in, and then he’s stumbling over crates of fresh produce and coffee beans and _Richie,_ a miserable ten minutes and thirty seconds late.

“Woah, jesus!” Richie catches him by the shoulders, grip solid and heavy and sure despite his somewhat diminutive stature. A broad grin erupts across his face and Stan rolls his eyes, pushing his way past him to hang his bag on the door of the little back room. “Stan the man! Stanley the manley!” His eyes flick to his watch and his grin sharpens, becoming infectious. Stan does his level best not to return it. “Eleven minutes late. _Nice.”_

Stan rolls his eyes. Nursing his sore shoulder, he checks his reflection in the grungy little mirror propped up against the the corner where he knows Richie goes to smoke in between shifts, where Richie’d set off the smoke alarm and sent three fire engines screaming up the street a couple months back. “I slept in,” he confesses, truthfully, adjusting his perpetually-rumpled collar. Richie whistles.

“Yeah? Who’s the lucky girl?”

He can’t help himself. “Your sister,” he deadpans, smoothing out the crinkles in his uniform, (black shirt, black slacks, _red_ shoes) brushing a stray curl of hair off his shoulder. Really, it’s not _that_ obvious he’s been sweating. That he’d done whatever the cycling equivalent of sprinting was for five straight miles into the city just to keep his job. 

“Not bad.” Richie pushes his glasses up his nose and lurches forward to sling an arm ‘round his shoulders, bringing them close together. “Hope she was good as your mom.” He tousles Stan’s hair with his free hand, almost dislodging his kippah, then steps back before Stan can shrug him off. “You look fine, you princess. Vic’s hungover, so you can probably just tell him you’ve been here all morning and he’ll buy it.” His palm comes ‘round in a heavy slap on Stan’s (bruised) shoulder, and he’s halfway to the door before he pauses on an afterthought, spinning back on his heels to regard Stan in a way that involves a lot of flamboyant footwork. 

“Here—” He fumbles in the pockets of his slacks for a bit before pulling something out and slapping it into Stan’s palm. “For you.” It’s a nametag, its scribbly hand reading _Hi! I’m Stanley!_ in loopy, red, letters, with a doodle of a balloon to match. Stan eyes it quizzically.

“It’s for the new guy,” Richie explains. Oh, _hell._ He’d forgotten about the new guy. He’s supposed to be here early, for training duty. _He’d forgotten about the new guy._ “I mean, he knows me, and— no, actually, only me. Boss thought it’d be cute.”

Stan nods detachedly. It’s something he can imagine their manager, not so much renowned for being eccentric but for being not-all-there entirely, doing. Richie looks him over, then pets him on the shoulder again, gentler this time. “I’ll be outside, okay? You’re not even that late, man. Like, fifteen minutes now, but—”

Stan cuts him off with a caustic, “ _see you,_ Richie,” to which Richie shoots another grin, and then he’s gone, his disappearance punctuated by a burst of hubbub before the door is shut on him again.

Turning back to the mirror, Stan pins the badge to his lapel with a little more care than necessary. He checks his collar, his fly, his re-mussed collar, then, with a deep breath, pushes open the door to the rest of the restaurant.

The noise hits him like a freight train. If he’s honest with himself, the appeal of Neibolt is near nonexistent to him. It’d been a well house, an age ago; then, sometime in the eighties, it had been converted into a mini-museum for the town’s beaver-trapping days. It had a brief stint as a camp for delinquents and runaways, during which it had been all but torn down, and then, somehow, sometime during the early 2000s, it had been bought by its current owner who had looked at its shambling ruins and had somehow decided _ah, yes. Restaurant._

Renovations had taken nearly twelve years, and yet the floor is still uneven under his feet as he sneaks out from the back door, sloping steeply in some places, rising in others, the boards well-worn and shiny. The rooftop, held up by rafters visibly on the verge of decay, follows the same trend, the architecture the precarious middle ground between organic and entirely dilapidated. The decor reminds him of a haunted house he’d been to in seventh grade: eclectic, but absolutely charmlessly so. Their boss’d retained some of the original beaver-trapping equipment and had put his own spin on things in the worst way possible: old-fashioned lanterns hang on cords off the rafters for light, providing a sickly, yellow illumination for the clown paraphernalia stuffed into each nook and cranny. (He’s never seen so many clowns in his life. There aren’t enough for Neibolt to be categorised as an attraction, apparently, only just enough for Stan to trip over one or two with each step he takes). There are two, maybe three windows in the entire building, tops. Once, a middle schooler had gotten lost on the way to the bathroom and had stumbled back into the parlour crying her eyes out. Stan hadn’t blamed her— even he and Richie only dared go as far as the little, closet-sized, backroom, and only then for fifteen-minute smoke breaks, the only sources of light the pinpricks at the end of Richie's cigarette.

Despite this, it’s almost always full, alive with the pleasant white noise of cafés and restaurants and the idle youth: the grinding of coffee machines, gossiping soccer moms, music bleeding out of the headphones of art students skiving off school, the comforting clatter of plates from the kitchen. Careful to stay out of its view, he makes his way through the clusters of tables to Richie, who’s leaning over the counter. He’s accompanied by a man Stan doesn’t recognise, drawn into himself even tighter than Stan is. _The new guy,_ he figures.

Richie’s eyes light up when he sees him. He’s got his hand in the glass jar propped atop the counter, fishing for cookies. “Stan!” he calls, “Stan, get over here!” Beside him, the new guy twitches with a short of full-body shiver. Stan doesn’t blame him; Richie’d yelled loud enough to, if only briefly, cut through the warm burble of noise that hangs over Neibolt like a blanket. 

“Shut up,” he tells him, slapping the cookie out of his hand. Richie makes a wild grab for it and Stan whips it out of reach before dropping it back into the jar, returning the face Richie makes at him. He casts a worried glance over his shoulder, to the kitchen. “Do you want Vic to hear you?”

“I told you, he’s, like, super hungover. You could probably scream in his face, he still wouldn’t notice.” He draws another cookie —no doubt pilfered earlier— out of the pocket of his shirt, grabbing the new guy by the sleeve and alternating words between bites.

“This is Mike. He’s on cleaning duty ‘til the boss says we can put him on something else. He used to live on a farm— he can probably carry, like, twenty cups. He’s my new roommate,” he adds, uselessly. He claps his hand onto Mike’s shoulder with a resounding _slap_ —Stan winces _for_ him— and rubs it, grinning widely. “He can cook, too. Makes some mean vege schnitzel. I _love_ this guy.”

Mike smiles, somewhat bashfully. Stan studies him without speaking, and decides he likes him almost immediately. He has an honest, open, face. Big eyes, grip strong but not overpowering as he takes Stan’s extended hand. 

“Stan,” he says, shaking it he hopes firmly enough. He nods to Richie. “Sorry that there was no one else to flat with. I won’t hold it against you if you smother him in his sleep.” He pauses to gesture at his surroundings, subtly horrified by the thought that dawns upon him. “Did— he come _first_ , or this? Did Richie make you come here?”

“Hey!” cuts in Richie, spraying them both with cookie crumbs, “I am a fucking _fantastic_ flatmate—”

“Beep beep, Richie,” says Stan idly, not even bothering to look at him. Richie rolls his eyes so hard Stan’s surprised they don’t vanish into his skull entirely.

“Uh, no,” Mike still hasn’t stopped smiling, apparently growing into the shy curve of his mouth. Stan really can’t help but feel very, very, sorry for him. “I needed somewhere to stay, and it was the only place where I could think about covering the rent—”

“Rent’s _shit,”_ agrees Richie. “’s a good thing Gordon’s  _loaded,_ else your boy’d be out on the streets—”

“—and even then it wasn’t enough, so I started looking around for jobs, and—”

“—Neibolt was the only one taking applications,” Stan finishes. Mike’s nod stirs some long-sleeping dread deep inside of him, and he hesitates, then reaches ‘round to pet the shoulder unclaimed by Richie. “It’s not that bad.” Sincerity pulls taut his words, clipping their ordinarily blunted tone. “I mean, the owner’s never here, so—”

“—yeah, and s’long as Vic doesn’t notice you, you get tons of free food.” Richie’s pulled a second cookie out of his pocket, and is demolishing it at the same, quite frankly absurd, rate as he had the first. Stan turns a weary eye on him. 

“Shut up, Richie. Does he know where the bikes go?”

Richie goes blank. Stan almost snatches the cookie out of his hand right there and then. _Typical._ “Oh, shit— I forgot. We don’t keep our bikes on the road, man. Not since— uh— not since a steamroller went over Stan’s.” _Or since Vic went over it with a steamroller, apparently._ Scuffing his mouth with his palm, he relinquishes his hold on Mike to grab him by the collar, —“c’mon, I’ll show you—” in the process of marching him outside before the latter plants his feet in the ground and drags both of them to a stuttering halt. 

Mike, bless him, is strong enough to physically untangle Richie from him, and does so with ease, putting a comfortable few feet between them— a feat Stan has never been able to achieve. “The rack out back, right? I saw it when we came in, I can—”

Stan turns on Richie. “You chained up your bike and you _forgot_ about his,” he asks flatly, folding his arms across his chest. “You chained up _yours.”_ Richie shrinks back, hands up and palms open in surrender— or, hand. The other is wrapped protectively ‘round his stolen cookie.

“Hey, it’s not like I meant to—”

“It’s fine,” interrupts Mike. His gaze is vaguely amused in a concerned, uncertain, sort of way as it flickers between the two of them. “I can do it. Really.”

Richie huffs, closing the distance between them with two massive lunging steps. “It’s fine, dude.” To Mike’s shoulders he offers not even a second of reprieve, clapping his hands down on them again to steer him toward the back. “You’re on counter today,” he reminds Stan over his shoulder, big white grin shiny in the sallow light. Stan nods. Counter’s fine. He can do counter. If working at Neibolt was all punching in bills and scooping cookies and loaves of challah and rye into paper bags, he’d never be late. 

“Oh, and Stan?”

Stan looks to him, one eyebrow raised, hoping he looks suitably vexed. Richie’s fingers do a little dance atop Mike’s broad shoulders. “Not that I don’t dig the whole dishevelled look, but you might wanna—” he licks his hand, and pitches forward; Stan, seeing where this is going, steps back yet fails miserably in attempting to deter him from to swiping it over Stan’s crown, snickering all the while at Stan’s attempts to swat him away. “—There we go. You might wanna take a look in the mirror, fix yourself up.”

“ _What.”_

Richie’s grin is vibrant and ruinous, eye-searing against Mike’s subdued amusement. “They haven’t come yet,” he whisper-yells, playfully conspiratorial into Stan’s cheek, and Stan’s heart _drops_ into the pit of the stomach. “ _He_ hasn’t come yet. So, I’m just saying, if you wanna pretty yourself up before—”

Stan slaps the cookie out of his hands with enough force that it crumbles when it hits the ground. The indignant little wail Richie makes is distressed enough to sluice through the unintelligible babble surrounding them for a brilliant moment, and then Stan is digging his heels into the floorboards with each step as he makes his way to the counter and Richie is laughing all the way out the back, and the noise swallows them entirely again.

* * *

They come a little past twelve. (If Stan spends the hour beforehand sneaking surreptitious glances of himself in the bread cabinet, playing up and smoothing down the wiry curls of his hair in precise ten-minute increments, no one, least of all Richie, has to know.) Stan is adjusting glass jars of cookies and truffles, two buttons of his shirt undone in a last-ditch effort to slow the process of burning alive: whereas somewhat pleasant in winter due to in equal parts the old-fashioned furnace by the kitchen and how supremely poorly the old building is ventilated, Neibolt is _nightmarish_ during the summer, _just_ tolerable enough to shy of an actual violation of actual human rights. Leaned over the glass display case, Richie sips daintily at an iced mocha in a paper takeaway cup; beside him, by the coffee bar, Mike wrestles with the espresso machine. 

“You can have some of mine,” Richie offers, waving the cup at him. Mike’s doing something that involves a lot of cranking and twisting of levers and knobs that Stan is vaguely aware should not be cranked or twisted. The machine is audibly protesting his efforts; after a couple more minutes, he sighs and gives up. Stan gives he and it a lazy, wry smile. 

“Fridge,” he suggests, petting it with one open hand. Richie snorts, sleepily tonguing the rim of his cup.

“Nothin’ i’it,” he grouches. “Vic the prick’s been keeping beer in’t all year.” 

“Oh,” Mike’s brow furrows. “I don’t drink.”

Stan makes a non-specific gesture with the hand not slumped over the top of the cookie jar, a show of solidarity. “Neither.” Well. Not _really_.

An indeterminable pause. Then, Richie sighs. “Yeah, me neither.” He takes another sip, then waves at Stan with his cup, describing a low, lazy, arch spanning the distance between him and the glass bread cabinet.

He asks: “Sip for some challah?” 

Stan asks: “...Did you get that out of the trash?”

Mike laughs helplessly. Before Richie can respond, however, the door sweeps open, bringing in a gust of smoke-smell wind. They —and the rest of Neibolt— sigh in bliss, their rhapsodies accompanied by the awful jaunty circus tune wired to its open and close, and Stan stretches up off the counter, cracking laid-on joints rubbery with heat. Mike rises away from the coffee machine with a jolt; Richie tips his half-empty cup in a lazy salute. 

“Welcome to Neibolt restaurant, café, and organic grocers’,” he starts automatically, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes. 

And then he stops.

And Richie stops.

Mike, unaware, unassuming, uninformed, sees his opportunity and clears his throat. He asks, “Table for two?”

The taller of the two men standing in the threshold of the door smiles, nodding vigorously. “Y-yeah.” He pauses to adjust the hem of his sweater, obviously uncomfortable in its wooly, most likely super-heated, confines. “I-is there a t-table buh-buh-by the back? I-it’s so h- _hot,_ huh—”

“I’m going to get _heatstroke,”_ complains the smaller, cutting him off. “I think I sweated, like, _two_ _quarts_ just walking up here.”

“Holy _shit,”_ whispers Richie, looking unbelievably, unimaginably pleased. Neither of them hear him, though, and so he’s free to regard them both with wide eyes and a wider smile, sweaty hands squeaking as they drag down the glass surface of the bread case. Stan could hit him. Oblivious, Mike moves as to obscure the wrecked espresso machine, wiping his hands on his shirt.

“Sure, I’ll, I’ll check—”

“Thuh- _thanks—_ ” His eyes search Mike, trying to establish some form of familiarity, before settling on his badge. “—M-Mike. Eddie, c’mon.” His friend, _Eddie,_ detaches himself from the bread case in an instant, apparently unaware of Richie near melded to its surface, rambling unintelligibly about heatstroke and hydration, (”—you know, the other day Veronica just _passed out,_ and they had to take her away on a stretcher, man—”) already on a direct line for the darkest, dampest corner of Neibolt. The taller follows the movement easily, smile winsome and pleasant, and for a second it looks like he hasn’t noticed Stan; that he and his friend’ll follow Mike to the table without event, and Stan’ll go for a well-timed hour-long smoke break and all will be well, until Richie ruins it,

because when Mike gets to his feet, Richie beats him to it. 

"Wait, Mike,” he starts, and his voice swells in the empty space left by the jackhammer beat of his heart between Stan’s ears. “You can’t, man. That table’s reserved.” His smile is cheeky but true; his voice bright, powerful. He has a fucking chocolate-milk moustache from his mocha. Stan could _really_ hit him.

Mike looks at him quizzically, but allows himself to be guided back to the coffee machine as Eddie and his friend allow themselves to be shepherded to the table—

—directly opposite the counter.

“Sorry, guys.” Richie _tries_ to apologise— for what it’s worth, he’s really trying, even if the apology’s more to Stan than anyone else. Vibrating slightly behind the counter, Stan considers making a comment about how he’s _not so slick, dumbass; not with that shit-eating grin,_ but refrains. It’s not worth it, and maybe he hasn’t been noticed, yet, maybe—

Too late. 

With a good two inches over Richie and at least one over Mike on the absolute tips of his toes, Stan’s just not short enough to vanish behind the counter like Richie does whenever Vic or Huggins come in for their shifts with angry eyes and mouths set in angrier scowls. As a result, when the taller’s eyes sweep around the restaurant, ‘round Richie’s crooned apologies, ‘round the counter, they fall on Stan.

He goes so red Stan thinks he might pass out. His mouth opens, closes. Tries to make a smile.

Stan gives him a robotic little wave.

Richie leaps back into action. He’s got one hand on Eddie’s shoulder, the other on his friend’s, seemingly the only thing keeping the latter from dissolving into a sweaty stuttering mess. “Hope this is okay, gents,” he chirps, still unapologetically chocolatey. He nods to Mike and he’s on them in an instant, pulling out chairs as Richie slaps menus onto their tables. “Give one of us a shout once you’ve decided, okay? My favourite’s the hazelnut pavé. Can’t go wrong with dessert, and who doesn’t _love_ nuts, right?” The little one — _EddieEddieEddie_ — screws up his nose at him before Richie all but manhandles him into his seat, but otherwise seems unaffected; his _friend_ , though—

—his friend never takes his eyes off Stan.

It leads to him stepping and sliding over a coffee-spill and almost falling flat on his ass. For a second, he’s the more mortified out of the two of them.

But only for a second.

* * *

He leaves Mike and Richie to deal with them; the moment Eddie’s friend’s ass hits his chair, Stan is out from behind the counter and to the back, the back of his neck unpleasantly hot as Richie whistles after him. (Richie: ”Shit, there’s Speedy Gonzales! Watch him go!” Mike: _“...Speedy Stan.”_ ) Getting to the backroom involves a lot of manoeuvring around patrons trying to get to the counter to pay for lunch, and, by rote, the kitchen— Neibolt has some kind of open kitchen thing going on that’s probably supposed to reassure customers that whereas the decor is fairly shitty, the food isn’t, but in reality only gives both he and Richie a direct line to Vic, who is more often than not pissed off at one —if not _both_ — of them. 

He’s not particularly sure what authority Vic has over them that allows him to so acutely fuck them over for lateness, and laze around all day in the kitchen, of all places, while Stan and Richie —and now Mike— sweat it out waiting on tables, but he still cowers a little when Vic shoots him a look that’s half-pissy and half-bored and entirely unfriendly. Vic’s a little smaller than him, —skinnier, even if he’s all legs— but, still. Stan’s careful to close the door behind him as he enters the backroom and pretends to light up.

He gets through three chapters of a study on black robins in the Chatham Islands before the door is flung open. Stan, crouched by the mirror in the corner of the room, starts so violently he hits his head on the low-hung lamp, almost hurling his phone at the door.

Unsurprisingly, it’s Vic. He eyes the cigarette in Stan’s fingers with some degree of approval despite the fact that Stan's not actually smoking (he never has, actually, but he still spares a couple bucks for a pack each month as a bribe for Richie), shutting the door behind him with his boot. “Trashmouth wants you,” he says by way of explanation, hiking up his shirt too far up to search for something —his lighter, probably— in his pockets. It reveals a nice stretch of skin from sternum to navel that Stan does not pay any more attention than due at all. It's not that he's into Vic, not really— two years since highschool and the guy honestly still unnerves him a little, or a lot, but though Stan's embarrassed to admit it, he hasn't been on a date in a while, and—

Vic's not— _bad_.

 _Pull it together, Stan._ “Tell him I’m on a break.”

“...You’ve been on a break for forty fucking minutes. Get out.”

There are a multitude of things Stan would rather do than pretend he doesn’t notice Eddie’s friend trying not to notice him. This is one of them. “I’ll trade you a smoke, if I can stay.”

Vic considers it. “Five minutes,” he decides, eventually. “You get five minutes.”

Five becomes ten becomes fifteen becomes twenty. When Stan finally does leave, he’s four cigarettes lighter, almost unable to breathe. Richie makes a beeline for him almost immediately, pinning his arms to his sides, marching him stiffly to the counter. “Holy shit, what took you so long? I was about to bust in with Mike. Were you fucking him or something?”

Stan rolls his eyes. “Not my type,” he snaps. _Honestly._ Richie squeezes his arms in response.

“Yeah, that’s my sister, right? Anyways, you can chill out now, _je-sus._ They’re gone. Hey, guess what they ordered. _Guess.”_

As a rule, Stan tries not to entertain Richie, tries his very best to hold out ‘til the very end. As a result, Richie almost always wins. The thing is, he knows what the little one —Eddie— orders, because he’s been ordering the same set of things for _months,_ even since before he started bringing his friend to Neibolt. Chickpea chile verde and cashew crema and frothy hot chocolates _—”can I get the marshmallows on the side?”—_ in winter; smoked mushrooms and sweetcorn, romesco and fava and a carrot juice in summer. It’s a major source of angst for Vic, who he apparently has history with, who frequently and bitterly voices what he’d like to do to Eddie for all his careful scrutiny of and bitching regarding dishes he doesn’t even _make._ Eddie's friend is different, which is to say, a normal person, if not for the fact that he won't stop trying to sneak glances at Stan over his menu.

Stan shrugs. “Smoked mushrooms, romesco—” That’s obviously not what Richie’s looking for, because he punches Stan on the arm, leaning up to talk into his ear.

“Fazzoletti,” he hisses, “with the ricotta, and fennel! Who _willingly_ orders fennel— apart from _you_. Watermelon lemonade. Cherry-fig tart. Olives in _puh-puh-prosciutto_ on the side. He asked if they were organic— _o-organic,_ Stan-man _.”_ He does a passable rendition of Eddie’s friend’s voice, his cutesy little stutter. Stan’s heart does a flop. 

“Good taste,” admits Stan. In a sea of orders for trevally bruschetta, spaghetti, lasagna— it’s nice to hear _something_ —

“ _Your_ taste,” Richie teases.

Stan doesn’t deny it.

“Anyways, just thought you’d like to know.” Richie releases him with a jolt. Stan hums, dusting off his work shirt, making his way back to the counter.

“Did they tip?”

Richie grins a little. That in itself is strange— Richie is all or nothing, always. Stan doesn’t give it much thought. “Yeah,” he says. “Thirty percent, exactly.”

Repurposing himself back to the rearrangement of jars, Stan lets his mind wander. _Cherry-fig,_ screams the beat of his heart. It’s not like he has any particular love for cherries, it’s just— _cute_. Like watching a child order a hot chocolate or a dessert for the first time. Cherry-fig, fucking _fennel,_ Neibolt itself— it’s shamelessly bougie. Horribly pretentious, as is pretending to smoke in a café backroom. 

But still. _Cute_.

He’s ripped out of his reverie by a little cough. He looks up, looks too far, adjusts his gaze to look down, and meets eyes with— _Eddie_.

Which means that Richie'd lied. Which means that—

Eddie pays in cash out of a fanny pack, glancing anxiously over his shoulder as Stan counts, numbly, his change in coins. For a second it looks like he’s about to _yell_ , and then— his friend, the taller one, comes out of the bathroom, smiling apologetically. Stan’s chin snaps down, against his neck.

“You okay?” Eddie asks. His friend is still toying with his sweater as he approaches them, seemingly unsure of where to put his hands. Stan can relate.

“Y-yeah. C-couldn’t _fffff_ -find the buh-bathroom.”

Eddie doesn’t look at him as Stan gives him his change, which is okay, because Stan doesn’t look at him either. Or at his friend. Or anywhere but down. “Was it gross?”

“I-it was okay. I— d-don’t really ruh- _recommend_ it.”

Despite himself, Stan snorts. Eddie either doesn’t notice or care. But his friend—

—His friend _does_ , and Stan can hear the voiceless rhythm of the open-close-open-close of his mouth in the gentle _pop_ his lips make each time they part. He cares so much that even when Eddie is half out the door, waiting for him, he lingers, hands on the counter as Stan thinks about finches and blue tits, sliding the glass jars back and forth, to and from each end of the counter. Eventually, he turns to the bread cabinet.

“U-um,” he starts. “C-can I get a—”

“I recommend the challah,” pipes up Richie, leaned against the counter. Beside him, Mike gingerly takes a cloth to the espresso machine. His eyes meet Stan’s and his brows lift in confusion when Richie elbows him in the side. “The challah’s pretty good.”

“Yeah,” adds Mike upon Richie’s provocation of another elbow to the gut, perplexed. Richie grins.

When Eddie’s friend’s gaze swivels around to rest on him again, Stan looks up. The guy virtually _evaporates,_ most likely unaware of how red he’s gone. Cherry-fig. _Don’t think it, Uris. Don’t let yourself think it._ “It’s alright,” he offers, eventually. “I’ve had better.”

Richie’s crinkling his paper takeaway cup —his paper _trash_ cup— into his fist, looking between Stan and Mike and Eddie’s friend like they’re all old friends, like Stan doesn’t want to fucking slap the shit out of him and all the air out of his lungs and Eddie’s friend isn’t vibrating slightly with— _something_. “’course you have. Y’Jew.”

“It’s not that great, Richie.”

“But for us who’ve never seen the stars above of what it can be, isn’t it _enough?”_

Seemingly assured by this exchange, Eddie’s friend taps on the bread case, a few precious inches from eclipsing Richie’s hand entirely. “I-I’ll take a loaf of challah, and a, uh— chocolate chip cuh-cookie.”

Richie gives him a thumbs-up. “Excellent choice! Fan-fucking-tastic.”

Stan doesn’t quite mean to direct his smile at Eddie’s friend, —and it’s his waiter’s smile, the smile he gives little children and soccer moms and rowdy freshmen _and everyone in between_ demanding refunds, refills— but he goes into raptures when Stan levels his gaze at him nevertheless. He pays with card, snatching, Stan notes, his bag of food from Stan with a little more haste than necessary. His eyes skim over Stan, visibly appreciating the wild curls of his hair, (thank _god_ for all that time spent fretting over his reflection in the bread cabinet) his unbuttoned collar; lingering on his shirt open two buttons in, coming to a gentle rest on the nametag pinned to his lapel. He clears his throat. 

“Thuh- _thanks_ , Stanley.”

Only dimly aware that he shouldn’t, Stan corrects him out of habit. “Stan’s fine. Come again,” he adds, somewhat drily.

The guy almost stumbles through the door joining Eddie outside of Neibolt. He glances back once, meeting Stan’s robot-smile with a haphazard one of his own, and then he’s gone, an indiscernible sunlit point amidst the wavering heat. 

Stan lets himself think it. _It’s sort of cute._

* * *

They get off at five, stumbling through the smoked-up backroom, when Vic’s been safe and cozy at home for at _least_ an hour. Richie goes for his bike and Stan for his, both tired, both delighted by the integrity of their respective rides. Standing between them, Mike clears his throat. 

“So,” he begins. Stan looks to him inquisitively. Richie pushes his glasses up his nose. Mike makes a series of vague, questioning hand gestures that look a little like he’s going to have a seizure. “That was— should I know about that?”

Richie cocks his head to the side, tries to lean on his bike. Like an idiot, he trips over it, flipping Stan the bird when he scoffs before turning back to Mike. “Know about what?”

Exhaustion is deadweight on Stan’s larynx, hot through his pursed lips as he expels a noisy breath through his teeth. “I don’t know, Richie. Know about _what.”_

It takes longer than it should be legal for Richie to get it, but he grins eventually, wheeling his bike back and forth atop the gravel. “Oh, that’s—” He pauses, evidently made aware that neither he nor Stan know, in fact, Eddie’s friend's _name._ Hell, neither of them know _Eddie_ or his friend, _period_. “—this guy. A regular. He’s like, in love with Stan.”

“He isn’t.”

“He is, he _freaks out_ whenever Stan looks at him. And Stan loves him too, _don’tcha_ —”

“I fucking don’t.”

“That’s what you said, like, two months ago—”

“It’s what I’m saying now, Richie.”

Mike looks between the two of them, obviously, quietly, amused. A supernatural force in himself, Richie continues. “He’s not ready for a relationship yet—” _(not untrue)_ “—I keep telling him, ‘you gotta get over Pete, man’—” _(what the fuck)_ “—but he just won’t _listen_.”

Mike all but _convulses._ Stan follows suit. “Peter Gordon?” His eyes dart to Stan. Stan sighs, a long, torturous, sound. Richie, the little prick, takes that as the go-ahead.

“Yeah, they did it in your room, Mike, —y’know, _before_ it was your room— on the _bed_ , and it broke Stanley’s heart, and that’s why Stan doesn’t live with us anymore, and why we have you.” He brushes a loose curl of hair off his forehead, away from the frames of his glasses, reaching over to slap Stan’s back. “Pete’s not my type— I’m a bigger fan of the ladies, when they’re, you know—” 

“—Richie _do not_ say ripe—” 

“—Hey, Stanley, y’took the words right outta my mouth. Anyways, the point is, Stan’s a bitter, heartbroken, old man who doesn’t give anyone any chances.”

Stan makes a point of not looking at him. “I didn’t fuck Gordon,” he tells Mike. Mike grins. It’s— shaky, a little uncertain, but earnest. Yeah, he likes this guy.

“Yeah, I figured.” He walks over to his bike, unchaining it with a fluid, powerful, movement that Stan admires quietly and Richie with slack-jawed veneration, and then they’re out of the carpark, all three of them walking their bikes by their sides.

At the junction where Richie and Mike turn to the flat they share with Peter Gordon, and Stan to his one-bedroom apartment, Richie stops. Looks over Stan with something uncharacteristically pensive on his friendly face. “You do like him, though— right?”

Stan thinks it over. “He’s cute.”

Richie nods, apparently satisfied by this answer. They exchange goodbyes, Stan waiting until they’ve pedalled out of sight before setting his bike into first gear and riding home.

At home, he spends a good portion of time going through his contacts for an Eddie. He’s— admittedly more than a little disappointed when all he finds is the Corcoran he’d known in seventh grade.

* * *

“I think they’re my least favourite regulars.”

This, when Mike’s been working with them three weeks; this, three weeks into becoming _something_ to Eddie and his friend, who now, enlightened of his name, use it with unadulterated glee and seemingly no semblance of discomfort or awkwardness. (The week after, Eddie had clicked his fingers at him, calling _“Hey, uh,_   _Stan,”_ high and clipped when he’d been served the wrong juice. Vic had looked like he’d wanted to flip him into a trash can for _daring_ , and, well, Stan hadn’t been entirely opposed to the idea.) Wrestling with an unyielding tub of vanilla coconut ice-cream, he has bigger problems to deal with than Richie’s three-pm musings. He’s content to ignore him ‘til Richie repeats it, and even then only shoots him a piercing look over his shoulder. 

“I heard you.” With fingers bruised on a quart of ice-cream— this, he grouches, is not how twelve-year-old or teenage or even _graduating_  Stanley’d envisioned he’d be spending his life. _Kea and kakapo,_ he reminds himself. _Forest owlets. Asian crested ibises._

In the end, he gives up and hands it to Mike, who takes about four seconds to pop the lid off. “Thanks,” he tells him, and sets it on the coffee bar, procuring from behind him a set of crystal-cut tumblers. Mike’s wide-eyed regard of the swiftness of the motion makes him smile possibly a little more smugly than he ordinarily would. But only a little. 

The fixed coffee machine hums pleasantly. Stan gives it a fond pat before turning back to Mike, ice-cream scoop in hand. “Okay, this is how you make an affogato—”

“I mean,” cuts in Richie, “ _look at them.”_ Stan doesn’t want to, but looks, following Richie’s line of sight to— Eddie and his friend at a table in the dead centre of a little cluster of chattering hockey players. Eddie’s still in his fanny pack; his friend, still in his suffocating-looking sweater. The only difference between now and three weeks ago is that when he meets eyes with Stan, he flushes furiously, the smile that flits from cheek to cheek broadened by familiarity as well as fondness.

Stan smiles back. But not as widely. Never as widely.

(Granted, he’s not sure if it’s possible for him to smile that widely. He’s certainly never tried.)

“Leave them alone, Richie,” he deadpans. He presses a ball of ice-cream into each tumbler, tapping the scoop on the rim of the last glass when it refuses to come loose. He glances up to Mike again, trading the scoop for a shot-glass of espresso. “It’s really not that hard. You just add the coffee, and that’s all.” He does so. Mike watches him, perhaps more attentive than he should be. Certainly more than Richie had been before upending the drink, ice-cream and all, over Belch Huggins’ head when Stan’d tried to teach _him._ It’s a nice change. (Stan’s considering kicking Richie out of his flat, and moving in with Mike and Peter.) (He figures they can trade the latter for someone else easily enough.)

Stan withdraws the scoop and Mike whistles. “Cool,” he says.

Richie glances back at them. “Don’t forget the cinnamon. And— _ooh_ , the little chocolate shavings.” Stan rolls his eyes, but complies. Richie steamrolls on. “Seriously. Take a good, long, look.” Stan does _not_ comply. “Does he think he’s cute enough to make up for the fanny pack? I mean, he is. He kinda is. But he always gets the same thing: mushrooms—”

Stan helps him out. “Smoked mushrooms, sweetcorn, romesco, fava, carrot juice.”

“Yeah, that. Who fucking likes _mushrooms_ that much?”

“I don’t know. You liked gnudi that much, though,” Stan reminds him. Richie adjusts his glasses. It’s still early, so they’re not all sweating through their collars, _yet,_ but he slides Richie a glass of iced water with his tumbler anyways, passing him a spoon on afterthought.

Making a vague noise of gratitude as thanks, Richie attacks it, frowning into the mountain of chocolate shavings. “Gnudi’s fucking good, Stan-man. You think he’s a vegan?”

Mike makes a helpless noise of mirth into his affogato. Stirring his into oblivion, Richie grins at him, the sound he makes when he brings the spoon to his lips downright _obscene_. “Oh, _fuck_ , that’s good. I love you, Stanley. I do. —And, I mean, it’s fine, it’s just— the same thing. _Every day._ And his friend—” Stan perks up, just a little bit, “—What a _hipster._ What, today—”

“Goose confit, preserved lemon yoghurt, eggplant. Balsamic on mesclun. Almond shake,” Stan recites, teeth coming down hard on the edge of the spoon, tongue a little heavy in his mouth. The look that Richie slides his way verges on _lecherous_. Stan shuts it down with a dead-eyed glance.

“Goose’s okay,” remarks Mike offhandedly. “I like duck more. Would you be okay with it? If he asked you out.”

Stan blinks at him. “You too, huh?” (Richie tacks on a wheedling  _"Et tu, Brute?"_   and all but cackles; neither Mike nor Stan spare him a dissuading glance.)

“Sorry. Guess I’m curious.”

Stan thinks about it. (He’s been doing a lot of that recently.) He looks over to Eddie, and his friend. (He’s been doing some of that, too.) “Yeah, I guess. I don’t think he would.”

Richie snorts. “Yeah, he’d piss himself before he could, or blow his pants. I mean, he already does that every time he says your name.” He shakes his head disapprovingly before withdrawing a cookie from his shirt pocket. Stan arches an eyebrow at him that Richie ignores as he crams it into his mouth. “Why don’t we get cool regulars? People who, like tip.”

“Eddie and his friend tip,” offers Mike. He looks to Stan for support, who nods vaguely, detached but carefully so, to a snort from Richie.

“Shit, don’t say his name that loud, man— okay, yeah, but _cooler_ tips. _Larger_ tips. _Worst_ regulars,” he concludes, slapping his palms on the counter to shake off the crumbs. “Stan. Thoughts?” He nudges him with an elbow. “Who’s your pick?”

Stan grimaces thinking on it. He doesn’t have to think for long. “Bowers,” he says, mirroring internally the revulsion that ripples through Richie; the dread, through Mike. Henry Bowers and Patrick Hockstetter came to Neibolt on the first Saturday of every month, on something that resembled a date in practically every way, but would get you a fist to the jaw if referred to as such. Inevitably, they picked the table in the dead centre of Neibolt; inevitably, they would bitch loudly and relentlessly over what to get. Patrick would eventually settle on the most expensive item on the seasonal menu; Henry, virtually everything else. They’d argue over who paid (Henry always paid), over who tipped (Henry never tipped). Plates and glasses would be dropped by Patrick and cutlery rattled by Henry until either Vic finished his shift and they went for a smoke break, or one of them lead the other to the stuffy little backroom to most likely fuck. It was a miserable experience. It was very uniquely Neibolt.

“Yeah, shit,” amends Richie, licking chocolate off his top lip. “Bowers takes the cake.” He sticks his tongue out when Stan leans over to thumb away a particularly stubborn streak, peering at Mike who’s suddenly all hushed tones, wide eyes. “You okay, man?”

“Bowers?” asks Mike, voice shrivelling away from its soft consonants, big eyes uncertain. “Bowers comes here?”

Stan laughs mirthlessly, sipping at the remains of his affogato. “He’ll be coming today.”

Richie nods, eyeing him suspiciously. A dreadful affirmation. “What. You know him?”

“I— on the farm. His dad owns the property by ours.” He winces; Stan, feeling sorry for him on a visceral level, reaches out to pat his shoulder. “We weren’t friends.”

“No kidding,” Richie chews his cookie, thoughtful. “Man, I thought we had it bad, having to look at him every month. _Jesus.”_

“We went to highschool with him,” Stan supplies, feeling as if it’s important, and Mike winces again. They sit there for a moment, all three of them cringing into their glasses, ‘til they begin to drift off: Mike and Richie, to the cookie jar and Stan to Eddie’s table by the back. Eddie’s sitting with his back to him, talking animatedly about something. Sitting opposite him, his friend sips at his shake in small, birdlike, motions.

 _He wouldn’t,_ Stan thinks.

But, you know. _Maybe_.

He looks up, then. Without Mike or Richie to temper its intensity, Stan looks back. Eddie whips around; seeing Stan, he falters, grins a little. He says something well-received: a fantastically dopey expression overwhelms his friend’s face and he looks down, back into his sweater, meeting Stan’s eyes in brief, timid, flashes only. It doesn’t mean anything. _It doesn’t mean anything._

Realistically, it means a lot of things.

And then the dopey smile drops right off his face and the grin off Eddie’s. Stan twists ‘round, flustered, a rarity in itself, just in time to get a good eyeful of—

—Bowers.

He doesn’t wait to be seated; doesn’t even give Stan a passing glance as he takes his usual table, Patrick in tow and laughing a slippery little laugh at something they’d been talking about outside. There's a special place in hell for whoever’s giving Henry this much time to blow on a Saturday afternoon, for that same person for then deciding _hey, one’s not enough. Let’s get Hockstetter out, too._ Beside him, at the counter, Mike jolts upright, into Richie, who does a pretty good job of not making any immediately loud or abrasive noises. Stan speaks up first, cold and clear and muffled into his fist.

“I’m _not_ taking them _._ You owe me, Richie. After—” he jerks his head at Eddie who, to his credit, is doing his utmost best to appear unbothered by Bowers’ presence, and his friend, who is beginning to vibrate slightly again. ”—that. You owe me.”

“ _That_ was nothing. And I’m on _counter,”_ hisses Richie in response. Mike puts his head in his hands. Stan relates deeply to the sentiment.

“It’s on me, isn’t it?”

Richie’s already sneaking another cookie out of the jar. He passes it to Mike on second thought before going for another, which Stan promptly slaps out of his grip. He seems to be content with letting Stan have that, because there’s no mischief, no cheek, lining the red curve of his mouth, only a crushing sense of capitulation that Stan feels deeply in his bruised fingertips as he asks Mike: “How many plates can you carry?”

* * *

The answer is: _a lot._

“My god,” remarks Richie, bread knife in one hand, a gnawed on ciabatta-loaf in the other. “He’s an _ox_.” Stan worries his spoon with his teeth as Mike balances three— four— five plates between his arms without any visible effort or difficulty, and Richie idly crumbs his loaf of bread. He moves like a finely-oiled machine, moving between kitchen and table almost as fast as dishes are put out, the steady, sure, click of his shoes on the hardwood floor therapeutic in itself.

—This is a good thing. The faster plates go onto tables, the less time spent actually waiting on said tables; spent lurking ‘round Henry, waiting for him to dole out the punishment for the crime of simply existing in proximity to him. There’s only one (terrifying) incident wherein Henry, halfway through his third shake, looks up just long enough to catch Mike’s eye, but it’s brief: Patrick uncurls a big-fucking- _spidery_ hand over Henry’s thigh and his eyes slide off Mike, any trace of recognition overwhelmed by possibly more pressing sensations.

It’s a little (which is to say, _very)_ gross, but god is _good_ , god is _fucking smiling on Stan today_ , because halfway through their meal, Vic pops his head up from the kitchen, and allows himself to be waved over by Patrick. This alone is a fucking blessing: he doesn’t think there’s anything as straight-up vile as cleaning up the backroom after Patrick and Henry’ve been going at it _in_ it. They smoke in Mike’s face when he brings the rest of their dishes, and Patrick tips in coins that scatter off the table and over the floorboards, but otherwise keep as quietly as they can be to themselves.

The afternoon drags on uneventfully. Stan, still none-too-subtly trying to make eye contact with Eddie’s friend on the other side of Neibolt, is about to go for a break when Richie clears his throat, startling him.

“So, Pete broke up with Marcia the other day...”

Stan blinks at him. When Richie doesn’t continue, he nudges him in provocation, leaning over the edge of the counter. “So?”

“So, he moved out. So, he says he needs some time alone or some shit. Fuck if I know. So— we have a free room, and there’s _no fucking way_ Mike and I can cover it by ourselves, so—”

Seeing where this is going, Stan cocks his head, considering it. He thinks of his apartment in the city with its flimsy blinds and threadbare carpet. The hard, stiff mattress; the bathroom light that flickers ominously during unholy hours of the night, interrupting his prayers, more than a little resonant of the shadows that teased him to and from waking when he’d been younger and snuggled up to his parents in their bed when his own seemed too cold, too dark, too lonely. 

And then he remembers Richie’s incessant bitching about how much he paid _weekly_ in rent. It’s easy to decline from that, the smile that tugs at his mouth small but grateful nonetheless. “Thanks, Richie. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

"You sure? I can direct all the girls coming through straight to my room, man, you won’t even know they’re there—” 

Stan swats away the hand that reaches out to muss his hair, expression a hard-set grimace. “Beep beep, Richie. It’s fine. Really.” Idly, he rakes his hand through his curls, dampening his fingertips with sweat. Richie gives him a fond little grin, reaching over to adjust his kippah for him. 

“If you’re sure. Don’t say I didn’t do anything for you, man. I’m gonna take a break. Gimme a call if Mike, you know. Dies.” He pets the pockets of his slacks, displaying the distinct outline of a pack of smokes with a wink ("why yes Stanley, I _am_ happy to see you!”); Stan levels an unamused stare at him— and then he’s hopping over Stan to the backroom, red loafers leaving scuff marks on the counter. Stan doesn’t have long to wonder why: when he looks up next, the table he’s come to call Eddie’s is vacant. Stan’s hands fret of their own accord over his kippah, his hair, his (still-ruffled) collar, and then Eddie’s friend is coming up to the counter, a little pink and a little uneasy.

Still very cute.

He’s wearing a different sweater today, a striped crewnecked pullover. His hair, dimly red in the sick, bile-y yellowlight of Neibolt, hangs in a meticulous-looking hank over his forehead. He has freckles. Stan gets the feeling that as he’s standing there trying to count change, the friend's staring right back just as intensely, just as absorbed by something about Stan’s face. He doesn’t know what —he can’t imagine what— but it doesn’t matter, because he’s not going to ask Stan’s number, or him out, or _anything_. That much is obvious when he clears his throat and ends up jerking a thumb back at the table that was formerly Henry and Patrick’s, where Mike is sweeping coins into a folded-up apron.

“I-I d-didn’t know Buh- _Bowers_ came here,” It’s the first thing he’s said to Stan that isn’t either a) totally, utterly, blissed-out, b) a jittery attempt at his name, or c) a combination of both. Stan pulls up his order —which is more coffee than actual food— on the cash till, snickering drily, and is met with a flustered smile. 

“He comes every month. Probably before a full moon, or something,” he adds under his breath. “You’ve just been lucky enough to avoid him ‘til now. Wish I could say the same.”

“Guh-guess me ‘n’ Eddie’ll h-have to find somewhere e-else f-f- _fuh_ -for lunch, huh.”

Stan really— _really_ can’t help it. He laughs a little. When Eddie’s friend hands him his card, he grossly overestimates the distance between them and their hands touch, stopping them both their tracks. _Nice going, Stanley._ His heart starts up its jackhammer beat against his ribs, in his fingertips. Eddie’s friend has— pretty, freckled, hands, sort of slender-looking, even the calloused heels of his palms sort of elegant. _Nice going Stan good job Stan—_

“Uh, I can get this,” says Eddie, suddenly an indomitable presence between them. Stan releases the card like he’s been burnt; his friend sort of stands there, one hand out, a little loose in the jaw, visually dissecting whatever it is about Stan he’s found so enamouring for the past— two months. (Two months. Would it have really killed him to ask Stan’s name even a little earlier?)

“N-no, it’s f-fine. I c-can pay.” There’s an unreadable look in Eddie’s eyes as he grabs him by the shoulders, —a feat easier said than done, considering the difference in their statures— and starts to steer him out the door; for someone so tiny, he walks with purpose in his stride, in his jaw.

“Really, I’ve got this.” The gentle insistence in his tone that suggests this isn’t the first time they’ve done this; briefly, Stan wonders if all the times he and Richie’d watched them bicker at their table had been about exactly this. Unsurprisingly, the friend yields, allowing himself to be coaxed out the door. Stan almost waves him off, just to exacerbate the situation, but thinks better of it; the poor guy looks about ready to sweat through his pullover.

“Thuh- _thanks_ , Eddie.”

“No problem, Bill.” _Bill,_ Stan notes, filing away the name for both immediate and later use. _Bill._

With Bill gone, Eddie turns his full attention on Stan, which is fairly okay. As usual, he pays in cash that he collects from the assorted pockets of his fanny pack. (Stan counts one— two bottles of hand sanitizer, and at least one pack of wet wipes.) They don’t talk outside of brief pleasantries (a mild, friendly, ”thanks, Stan,” to which Stan almost messes up and addresses him directly as _Eddie)_ ‘til Eddie’s collected all his coins and is halfway away from the counter, flitting between it and the bread cabinet. He stops for a long, long, while, preoccupied by some kind of strenuous internal conflict, then sighs in defeat. For the most part, Stan remains looking impassive.

“Bill really likes you,” is all he says. “—Sorry about how he gets.” The way he adds it, a little rushed, makes it obvious it’s only there to clamp down on the untempered earnestness of his previous statement.

He gives Stan a hopeful, hazy, smile. Stan gives him two chocolate-chip cookies on the house.

* * *

[ **stan.uris** added **richardrichietozier98** and **mike.h** to a group]

[ **richardrichietozier98** set his nickname to _YA BOI_ ]  
[ **richardrichietozier98** set stan.uris’ nickname to _stan the man_ ]  
[ **richardrichietozier98** set mike.h’s nickname to _big mikey_ ]

 _stan the man_ is typing...

[ **big mikey** set YA BOI’s nickname to _richie rich_ ]  
[ **stan the man** set richie rich’s nickname to _trashmouth_ ]

 _trashmouth:_ bitch

 _stan the man_ is typing...

[ **trashmouth** renamed the group _cool guy club_ ]

 _big mikey:_ ???

 _stan the man_ is typing...

[ **trashmouth** set stan the man’s nickname to _slow as fuck_ ]  
[ **big mikey** set slow as fuck’s nickname to _stan the man_ ]

 _stan the man:_ His name is Bill.

* * *

He doesn’t have any Bills, either.

 _Ha, ha. Any Bills._ Richie’d enjoy that, huddled up with Mike in Gordon’s condo and maybe even an _excess_ of bills. Stan doesn’t bother texting him it— it’s late, and not anywhere near one of his best, anyhow.

He goes through all the fifty Bills with which he is or was mutually acquainted with at some point in his life a couple more times, and falls asleep to the sound of an owl outside his window.

* * *

Prawn ravioli, buckwheat and cardamom waffles, berry shake. Prawn ravioli, buckwheat and cardamom waffles, berry shake. Syrup on the side. No more than a tablespoon of coconut sugar in the shake; _thanks, Stan_. _Are the dessert and brunch menus exclusive? No?_ Keep away from Moose, talk to Dorsey during break, _don’t step on any kids._ These are Stan’s thoughts in their entirety at Neibolt, interrupted only by brief, teasing, flashes of sparrows and finches, _parrots,_ in the branches of the trees that fortify Neibolt; the sudden awareness of the weight of his pocket encyclopaedia for hyperborean birds in his pocket.

Neibolt’s about as full as it’ll ever get, and he almost steps on four separate dogs before making it to Betty Ripsom’s table. Hunched into herself with her phone in her lap and red streaks down her cheeks, she’s a strong contender for the most pitiful thing Stan’s ever seen, embarrassed to receive her food, to look Stan in the eye. He considers offering her some words of comfort, —she’d probably appreciate them, no matter how awkward— but then Mike and Richie’re waving him over from the counter and he settles for leaving her be.

“I heard she quit after working for Bowie all year,” Mike tells him as he approaches. Richie makes a frantic, obscene gesture that’s all open palms, skewed wrists, its flamboyant oddness totally betrayed by his unsmiling face.

“Yeah, her and her creepy fucking dad. I mean, good on her, but I heard she’s flunking psych ‘cause she can’t buy textbooks, and no one else’s hiring. How do you fucking flunk _psych?_ ”

Mike frowns. “We’re hiring.” Both Stan and Richie look at him for a moment and he cringes, realising what he’d suggested. “Okay, yeah. Never mind.”

“Yeah, never-fucking-mind.”

Stan hasn’t been to classes for about six months, but in all honesty he’d probably rather flunk every single one of them than have to cover rent by way of _Neibolt._ He thinks of his stagnating bank account; of laughing kookaburras, peregrine falcons, lyrebirds.

(soon soon _soon Stanley.)_

In the end, he caves and gives Betty a warm lemon and poppyseed muffin from the bread cabinet. The way she picks herself up off her ravioli and the tiny " _thanks, Stan"_ she gives him is well worth the vexed look Vic throws him from the kitchen. 

The clock hung above the counter reads a quarter to one as he walks back, squeezing past Mike who’s been summoned to Frankie (or Freddy) Ross' table by the kitchen, reaching out to steady him by the arm when he almost trips over —yet another— dog. Mike gives him a grateful grin and then he’s through the throng with only Richie left to deal with, who’s looking at him oddly as he shimmies over the coffee bar.

“...What?”

Richie’s fidgeting a little. Just a little. “Hey, Stan-the-man, remember how I told you about Pete?”

“Still not _living_ with you, Richie—”

“No, we found a flatmate. Like, two weeks ago, man.” 

Stan’s hands still their fretting over the (broken-again) coffee machine as he glances over his shoulder to Richie, somehow simultaneously proud and curious and utterly uncaring. “Oh, yeah? Not bad. What’re they like?” He gives it a little slap. It does— absolutely nothing but spit a lump of something heinously dark into his paper cup.

“Like, a fucking nightmare. He walked in the first day and said he was going to have an _aneurysm,_ I swear. In _those_ words. He offered to pay to have the place cleaned. His mom’s fucking putting him through med or something, right, but the only reason he’s with us is to get the fuck away from her. Our entire bathroom is all his inhalers and shit. He has _no fucking inside voice_ — fuck you, asshole, don’t look at me like that. He and Mike hog all the hot water.” Stan raises a precise eyebrow at him, but there’s something distant growing in Richie’s voice, his words stretching away from his lips and meandering merrily down Stan’s spine, making him shiver. He’s doing the voice Stan’s only heard a few times through highschool, the dazed, dopey, one; a little awed, if not in total thrall.

Unsure of just what road he’s going down, Stan opens his mouth, and is promptly cut off by the godawful circus-tune of the door, its grating reverberation only tolerable due to who’s waiting on the other side. Bill catches his eye as he walks in, Eddie in tow, and smiles; Stan smiles back, a little embarrassed by how far his lips pull back from his teeth, how wide his mouth goes. They’ve progressed to greetings, now: Bill grinds out a shaky “N- _nice_ hair,”; Stan, a jovial “Nice sweater,”, impossibly wearing both the compliment and the smirk comfortably.

Surely Richie’d notice now, and god, he _cannot_ take the fallout this early in the day— only, Richie’s smiling a little, too. Blissed-out _. In raptures._ “He wears a _fucking fanny-pack,_ Stan. I’ve seen him wear, like, three. He brought his own _juicer._ He makes Mike kill bugs in the kitchen.”

And now, while Bill and Stan’d been looking at each other, Eddie’s beginning to look at them too. His eyes rake over Stan and he nods at him curtly, and then— then they settle on Richie, and there’s _recognition_ if not _relief_  there, smoothing out the acute _stress_ harrowed into his little face, and Stan—

Stan gets it.

 _No,_ he mouths at Richie. _No way._

Richie grins, pulling out two menus from beneath the counter. “Eddie,” he breathes, almost as if in prayer, “his name’s Eddie Kaspbrak.” 

He still looks slightly wonderstruck as he all but leaps over the counter.

* * *

What Stan feels when he sees Bill isn’t embarrassing. The sick little flutter in his heart, the smiles, the need to be constantly engaged in conversation, or— or _something_ with him _— that_ isn’t embarrassing.

What _is_ embarrassing is the haste with which he adds Eddie Kaspbrak the moment he’s through the door of his apartment. He’s flooded with Eddie’s life —or, what little of it he’s privy to— in less than five minutes. He’s an aspiring med student, inspired by the deficits of the health system and— his mother. He’s been 5′4 for at least five years of his life. His wardrobe seems to consist entirely of Lacoste polo shirts, chinos, skate shoes, _fanny-packs_.

He shares with Richie and Mike one mutual friend: one Bill Denbrough.

Stan’s thumb hovers over _Add Friend_ for all of thirty torturous seconds before he expels an equally torturous sigh, slamming his phone screen-down into his pillow.

If Bill wants him, —and he _better_ , considering what Richie’s put Stan through ever since he first strode through the doors of Neibolt at Eddie’s side and hit his head on a lantern— then he can ask. _He’d started this._ He could ask, too. (Disregarding how he hadn’t even been able to ask Stan for his _name.)_ For his number. Anything.

And Stan— Stan can wait.

He can probably wait.

* * *

It’s a bracing Sunday noon, the weather perfect for brunch fare, for birdwatching. With only two plates and one drink to dole out, Stan can virtually amble through as he makes his way to what Richie has deemed the new Bill-and-Eddie table, by the window. Portobello mushrooms, chickpeas and lentils; soft-boiled egg and sourdough; black tea with nougat, —terrific toffee— brown sugar and no milk.Stan gives him an approving look as he sets down Bill’s plates, and gets a smile that’s absolutely radiant _,_ more winning, less nervous, in return. Bill is _not_ like him; Bill does not smile like he has something to lose if he doesn’t, just _inordinately_ , shyly pleased. That’s all.

“Good pick,” Stan comments, as if he hasn’t been religiously committing Bill’s taste to memory for at _least_ a month now. Not renowned for his expertise in subtlety, he lets his fingers linger a little on the teacup before he slides it over to him. Bill’s thumb touches against his as he takes it.

“Thuh- _thanks_. I try.”

Eddie snorts quietly into his sweetcorn. Just as unreasonably pleased, Stan slides out a stray menu from underneath his plate, —no doubt forgotten by Richie— taps the dessert section. Bill’s eyes settle easily on the movement of his fingers, gliding up his wrist, stopping and brightening at his jawline, his face. Stan clears his throat, and figures he’s about four watts away from being totally blinded by the soppy, borderline _enamoured_ , grin Bill levels at him.

“If you’re here past five, I’d recommend the cherry solozhenik.” _Cherry, cherry. Figs and cherries._

“I-I was gonna go for the buh-buh-buh- _babka_.”

“I wouldn’t. It’s sort of shit, here. There’s a place down the street that makes the best babka you’ll ever have." Served by Marcia Fadden, too. "Worth checking out. I could take you.”

He doesn’t realise how much it sounds like flirt ‘til the words leave his mouth, but does a pretty good job of not choking on them.

A little ways behind him, Richie makes a mawkish, crooning, sound, dragging his palms down Mike, who’s shuddering a little with laughter. As surreptitiously as he can, Stan flips him off. As if in sync, there’s Eddie’s high, pealing laughter to his left, a little too knowing. “You could get both, Bill. We could get, like, everything, man. It’s not like we go anywhere else, right?”

Bill reddens so quickly Stan can almost feel the heat coming off his face. Still smiling, he leaves them to it, menu tucked under his arm.  

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” muses Mike as Stan comes up to him, “but it _does_ look like you’re doing the walk of shame.” Stan swats him with the menu; Richie high-fives him so loudly the noisy afternoon bustle of Neibolt clears for the resounding slap. 

Both Eddie and Bill look over at them. Richie waves fervently. It’s a little mortifying. _Speaking of Eddie—_ “Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” It comes out a jumbled hiss, hewn and compressed by the hard set of his teeth. Mike looks at him, mildly bemused. Richie, nursing his red hand, makes an expression almost directly contrary in intensity.

“Did you want us to ask about Eddie? _Hey, Eds, Kaspbrak, my man. Sorry, but you’re gonna have to wait before you move in— I have to ask my Jew friend if it’s okay, and he never texts back unless he thinks you’re dying._  What the fuck?”

Stan prods him in the chest with the menu. It wobbles weakly, expectedly but still disappointingly unsatisfying. “You could— you could’ve at least—”

Mike interjects then, and Stan— Stan just _can’t_ slap him with it too. “He’s been living with us for two weeks—”

“—yeah, it’s not our fucking fault you’ve been too busy making eyes at his friend.” Richie scrubs a hand across his mouth, collecting the crumbs of a cookie Stan hadn’t seen him steal. “ _Oh, Bill, maybe we’ll be up to holding hands by next year!_ Do you think he’s into cut-off wangs, or will you go on the bottom? Maybe he’s got, like, a fucking blue whale peen, or something—”

“Beep beep, Tozier.” 

As one, they whip ‘round, meeting Vic’s bone-dry, dead-eyed stare with varying degrees of dread and dismay. (For someone so unassuming in build, Stan muses, Vic is extraordinarily good at glowering, seething, and all in all looking like he’s two bad jokes away from smashing the cookie jar over Richie’s head.) (Put like that, he’s borderline _likeable_ compared to Bowers and his other former cronies, who while having outgrown some of their aggression, have yet to grasp the concept of proportionate punishment _,_ or even the idea of self-control at all.)

Unperturbed, Richie throws his arms wide. “Hey, Vicky! No Trashmouth? I knew you liked me, man; I _knew_ —” 

Vic draws his palm through the air; surprisingly, Richie complies, and shuts the hell up. “Bathroom’s blocked,” he intones dully. “Whoever’s on cleaning needs to deal with it before the kitchen closes for lunch.”

Richie looks at Stan. Mike looks at Stan. Vic flits uncaringly from Stan to Richie.

Stan hisses, “You _owe_ me.”

At the table opposite the counter, Betty Ripsom bursts into tears. A small part of Stan wants to laugh at Vic’s absolute bewilderment, Richie’s abject relief. Instead, he takes a brownie out of the display cabinet, and makes to refill her glass of water. He is, after all, good Samaritan and better employee first, and Denbrough enthusiast second.

* * *

[ **ekaspbrak** > **stan.uris** ]

 _ekaspbrak_ : can u tell richie 2 pick his shit off the fucking floor  
_ekaspbrak_ : i cant hear myself think  
_ekaspbrak_ : his laundrys blocking off my room im gonna kms  
_ekaspbrak_ : a cockroach just crawled out of his fucking shirt........

[ **stan the man** added **ekaspbrak** to _cool guy club_ ]

 _trashmouth_ : omg  
_trashmouth_ : eddie spaghetti  
_ekaspbrak_ : do not fucking call me that

[ **trashmouth** set ekaspbrak’s nickname to _eddie spaghetti_ ]

 _eddie spaghetti:_ im going to fucking kill u  
_trashmouth:_ omg

[ **trashmouth** set eddie spaghetti’s nickname to _eddie swaghetti_ ]

 _big mikey:_ stop that is worse  
_eddie swaghetti:_ move ur dirty clothes out of my door so i can fucking kill u  
_eddie swaghetti_ : btw turn ur music down  
_eddie swaghetti:_ ive been yelling @ ur door for 10mins

 _stan the man_ is typing...

 _big mikey:_ it’s pretty loud richie  
_trashmouth:_ glitch hop is an art form

 _stan the man_ is typing...

 _eddie swaghetti:_ fuck u im not kidding  
_trashmouth:_ ill move it literally rn if u stop putting vegetables in the fridge  
_big mikey:_ richie pls.

 _stan the man_ is typing...

 _eddie swaghetti:_ i will fucking play badminton with ur food fuck u   
_big mikey_ : badminton......??  
_big mikey:_ richie he’ll die  
_eddie swaghetti:_ badminton is a blood sport  
_trashmouth:_ juice this dick

 _stan the man_ is typing...

 _stan the man:_ You live like this.  
_eddie swaghetti:_ kys

* * *

At some point Bill seems to realise that he can, in fact, go to Neibolt without Eddie to accompany him, and begins to do so with regularity: Stan sees him almost every day. Cheered by this, he does his level best to talk to him over the counter the times he takes the table there, refusing to let Richie —who, more often than not, is too busy bemoaning Eddie’s absence into Mike’s shoulder to take any kind of direct action— deter him. 

He learns that Bill prefers brunch over lunch, and loathed those initial summery afternoons spent sweating to death in Neibolt. (There’s an implication there that he came continuously, if anything, for Stan; the approaching-autumnal breezes prick him with biting chill but he hooks his fingers into his shirt open two buttons in nonetheless, trying not to feel too pleased.) He can’t take spicy food. In half-decent lighting he’s absolutely peppered in freckles; sap that he is, Stan spends more time than he should thinking about kissing them.

Bill still hasn’t made any sign of making true on Eddie’s claim that he _does, indeed, really fucking like you, really,_ so he doesn’t dwell on it, but on particularly sweltering mornings, often following nights of torrential rain, the trees ‘round Neibolt hum with sparrows, and he watches Stan watch them, so— Stan can't really bring himself to mind.

This is one of those mornings. Richie's on counter today, churning through the refilled cookie jar; Stan, on taking his migraine out on the uncooperative coffee machine. Mike'd been either promoted or demoted to kitchen duty with Vic as a part-timer, pausing his kneading and wrapping of dough intermittently to wave and mouth noiseless _help me_ s at them. Grade school students and their parents trickle in and out of Neibolt like the muck out its overflowing gutters, gaits rushed by the prospect of another sudden downpour. He's really not looking forward to mopping up all the shit they leave over the floor.

"You're really fucking unbelievable, you know that?" More bothered than he should be by Richie's sudden outburst, Stan spares him a glance over his shoulder, catching his fingers on the machine's pump. Richie's eyeing him intently, whisper-yell hovering over the precipice of actual yelling. "I don't get it. I mean, you like him—"

Stan makes a dismissive gesture, just to be contrary. "He's cute."

"You like him. And you fucking know he likes you. You're killing me. You're killing _yourself_." After a moment, he adds: "You're killing _Eddie_ , he's virtually married to Bill, and he never shuts the fuck up about you. Do you know you wear cologne? 'Cause I don't. I _didn't_. Eddie didn't. But he _does_. _Ooh, S-SSSSStanley looked at me today_ —"

The thought of him rambling on about Stan is expectedly and endearingly cute, drawing a scoff from Richie at the smile that tugs treacherously at his mouth. "Okay, look— stop doing that. It's weird. You’re killing Peter, too. He moved back in yesterday, and you’re already killing him.” (Stan has half a mind to snap “ _good.”)_ “Whatever, this is the full Stanley experience, right? Go get ‘em. Lover-boy's waiting."

Stan hits him in the shoulder, but allows himself to be waved over to the kitchen. He takes the bowl Mike offers with a frown, making his way over and setting it down in front of Bill hard, perhaps with a little more cheek than polite. Or appropriate.

"Soup? ... _Really?_ "

Bill's smile is apologetic but earnest as he bites down on a joke affixed to the inside of his cheek. Their joke. Their thing. Figs and cherries. Stan's newfound verging-on photographic memory. "Th-there's n-nothing wrong with s-soup. ...I— I-I g-guess—" and he shifts a little, suddenly a little too lofty for his shapeless sweater, "—I guess I c-could be p-persuaded otherwise." His shoulders square, bringing an air of capability about his open, honest, face; Stan has— no problem imagining him as _distinguished_ in situations that would demand it.

It’s sort of funny how Stan seems to render him incapable of doing other, simpler, things, like asking a simple question. He kicks out a leg, toes a rise in the uneven floorboards. “Give me something to work with,” he tries, meaning a little more than he’s sure Bill will understand.

Bill’s cheeks puff out a little as he expels an uncertain breath. _Give me something to work with._ He’s no Richie— he’d never had to learn the art of flirt or of his kind of wit, but—

Bill knows his _cologne._ A lot of the time, not even _Stan_ remembers he’s wearing cologne. His morning ritual, in all its ridiculous detail, is an automated process thanks to the machinations of his therapist and his parents. _(Just don’t think about it, Stanley; it can’t control you if you don’t think about it.)_  It’s for this particular reason — _the morning after_ — that he figures he would not be the best of lays.

Which is— not a great thought to dwell on while Bill studies the space between them.

Eventually, this is what he offers Stan: “S-sweets,” said still chewing his cheek, his lip. “I-I’m a fuh-fan of sweets.” His mouth is very red, very bitten. Stan tries hard not to think words like _lush_ as Richie titters in his peripheral vision, _—hey Stan is that your bird book or are you just happy to see me—_ elbows on the counter, leaning into his cupped palms. “B-but I-I guess you already know that."

Though correct, the grin he offers is more than a little haphazard at the corners of his mouth; though correct, Stan returns it wryly, collecting his menu with a broad sweeping, violent motion. "You guess?"

He successfully sells Bill on beetroot gnocchi, creme fraiche, poached eggplant, returning with menu in hand to an audience one person larger than forecast: Vic's appraisal of him is studious, a mite shrewd from the open kitchen, boring holes into his _tighttighttight_ smile. When Mike, a little stricken, informs them they're out of eggplant, (go figure; that's what fucking happens when your demographic of bougie teenagers and soccer moms, food networkers and health nuts, delivers) he heaves out a pained groan and waves Stan away. "Leave it to me," he sighs, dialling a number on his phone. "And _don't_ look at me like that."

That is how Stan ends up sitting opposite Bill for the better part of forty minutes, interrupted only to set coffees and cupcakes on tables, and even then only sporadically; even Richie gets up in his place to wipe away a spill, mouthing _you owe me now, asshole_ as he rushes past. His hands fret over his collar, his belt, his kippah, and more often than not, in and out of his hair. Bill very much looks like he'd like to replace Stan's hands with his own, but settles for curling and uncurling them over the table, letting them bump and knock more than once against Stan's open-palmed expressions of exasperation as he bemoans Neibolt, his shitty apartment, the state of his account, his gap year. Outside, from the window next to which he and Eddie normally take up residence, sparrows titter and chirp.

"I don't go to classes anymore," confesses Stan over a flat white of unsure origin. Bill meets his eyes with a quizzical, but encouraging look. "I— couldn't get into it.  Or I could, but I couldn't keep going. It was worse for Richie. So we ended up here." He bites his tongue, clamping down on the threatened spillage of his _parents_ , his therapist, how he'd crawl into bed after morning classes and ball his fists up so tight his nails bit into his palms to avoid touching the light switch. He definitely doesn't bring up the paroxetine and benzos lined up neatly along his sink, their chalky taste burned into the back of his tongue.

"My parents said they could cover us from Australia and back, but we need to actually get out of here first." Syrup-sticky humidity hums acutely in his fingertips as he cradles his drink, taking dainty hummingbird sips, feeling more exposed than he'd like. "We're— ten k out." He deflates a little, before adding on a reassuring, "—which isn't bad. Richie's Richie. We'd be worse off, but Gordon rented out his condo at half the rate, and—" ( _I live in a shithole)_ "—I've made do, so we're getting there." By New Year's, he'd forecast, or by Easter at the very least. "He's probably going to DJ, —yeah, _DJ_ — or something as we go. So we don't sink."

A nod, understanding. "Y-yeah. I-I heard. Guh-glitch hop, right?"

Stan's gripped by a wave of irritation, struck by the idea that Richie and Mike, Bill and Eddie've been going around, getting it on, with each other behind his back while he pines _fruitlessly_. "He cornered you, didn't he?"

"No. Nnnnn-no, I—"

"Oh. Bill. Bill, _no_ ,"

"I-I subscribe to his Y-youtube chuh-channel." There's some degree of self-awareness in the bashful little snicker Bill lets slip that does little to muffle how loudly Stan snorts into his coffee; he goes mock defensive in a minute, setting down his fork. "It's not _buh_ -bad. It's not bad. I-I like it.”

When Richie passes, Stan grabs him by an apron-string, hauling him around. "I can't believe you still advertise that shit. I can't believe you still have it up. I can't believe you're still forcing people to listen to it." Richie rocks his hips into his face, cackling mad at Stan's retreat.

"I make art." He gives Bill a nod. "Big Bill over here knows it, Mike knows it, Eddie knows it—" (and here Bill convulses with laughter, shaking his spoon) "—even ol' Pete knows it. You just have shit taste."

He pulls out Stan's chair with his foot as he trots back to the kitchen. Stan glares at him as he leaves, pulling it back noisily over the hardwood floor as he turns back to Bill. "I mean, good on him that he's found something that he likes, I guess. It's bullshit, but he likes it." ( _"—Fuck yourself!"_ cries Richie from the kitchen, muffled 'round a mouthful of fresh bread.) "It's better than—" (what they'd done prior: Richie sleeping through his classes and Stan making neat lines of his pencils, swallowing pills dry) "It's better than _something_ , I don't know. And it means he doesn't have to live with me." He grimaces, because he can't imagine Richie living in his apartment. (He hasn't even dared to  _show_ it to Richie yet.)

Bill mulls this over. Then he asks, "What do _you_ like?"

Clear, without a stutter. Stan stares into the snare of his intertwined fingers, contemplating it, unsure what Bill'll do with the full story. Sometimes dreams have to wither up and die; this— _he knows this_. Mike seems to have grown _into_ his skin but Richie'd had to grow out of his Voices like Stan had to grow out of birdwatching on the coast and idling away sunny afternoons with a book in his hands and cycling down the boardwalk, hammering birdhouses into trees, feeling the wind on his face. Besides, he doesn't know —not really— Bill at all; this is the first conversation they've had that's not sheepish _bullshit_.

But then Bill prompts him with a careful, "S-Stan?" out his red red mouth and Stan dissolves.

He tells him about screech owls, golden pheasants, blue flycatchers in China, German red kites. He complains about his worn binoculars as old as he is, reflecting fondly on summers spent chasing egrets, stopping where wetland bled into just wet. His parents'll cover from Australia, —where he'll see galahs, cassowaries, bee-eaters— but before that there'll be Tongan starlings, Polish wagtails, spoonbills ( _and food, and food,_ reminds Richie in his head) in Japan and Brazilian red-crested cardinals, sketches of which he has pinned to his bedroom ceiling. Bill, who Stan is beginning to suspect is truly faultless, an angel among men, listens in thrall. Stan's forty minutes free drain away easy like that without a clock to jolt him back into reality, brought to an abrupt end by the telltale growl of an engine sliding into Neibolt's single parking space.

Stan, halfway through he and Richie's travel itinerary, slides back from Bill just in time to avoid Belch Huggins, who does not so much enter Neibolt as kick the door off its hinges, getting a good eyeful of his proximity to him. He's a little sweaty, like he'd been sprinting, two bulging bags of food in each hand. He’s wearing, Stan realises, his work uniform. Richie crows at him from the counter. "Hey, it's Reggie! If it hasn't been ages. I've missed you, man— no hug?"

The look Belch gives him is nothing short of murderous. Vic reaches him before he manages to act on it, snatching the bags from him, entirely dwarfed by their bulk. (Stan sees, poking out of their straining sides: fruit and carrots, sacks of grains, basil plants, _eggplants_.) They kiss quickly and messily as Richie makes whipping motions in the background, exchanging mumbled affections _—"Forgot my damn keys," "I'll pick you up, don't sweat it,"—_ and then the Trans Am is roaring down the street, Vic's back in the kitchen, and Mike's dragging produce to the cooks. If Bill is perturbed by the drama of it all, he doesn't say anything, only turns his attention back on Stan, expression open, imploring. 

So Stan talks. When he gestures a little too wildly and reveals the outline of the pocket encyclopaedia in the pocket of his slacks, Bill points it out, and after a little bit of dithering, Stan takes it out and shows him, going pink at red-inked notes he'd scribbled in margins and in between lines as a kid. ("I-I went to Alaska, when I was a kid," is one of another parts of himself Bill divulges, said tapping an image of a Canadian goose, "—a-and my brother, Georgie, got a-attacked by one of these. _Attacked_." The look of sheer distaste that overwhelms his features is so uncharacteristic Stan shakes with brief peals of helpless laughter.)

He learns that Bill isn't a student either, not anymore, but he'd been preparing for courses in commerce and anthropology, _journalism_ , and whereas certainly understanding, he seems a little hurt by Stan's amused incredulity. ("Commerce? You're kidding, right?" _"Whuh-what's wrong w-with commerce?"_ ) When his meal comes he goes slack-jawed, flipping his neatly-gelled hank of hair out of his eyes in disbelief. "No way," he hisses, "I-I can't finish this."

"You haven't eaten."

"I just had soup!"

"Soup doesn't count."

"What— y-yes it does."

"Barely." 

Worming out of the kitchen to the backroom, Mike snickers a little. Stan zips his finger through the air, making a vague cutthroat gesture.

Meanwhile, Bill's hand is a vice around his fork. "F-fine," he relents, "but you— you have to help me." He makes a face like a doe's, pleading, free hand curled over Stan's little encyclopaedia. "C'mon. Puh-please?"

That is how Stan ends up eating off Bill's plate, alternating bites between anecdotes of the shenanigans of the swallows and finches and odd squirrel in his backyard at home; Richie's godawful EDM channel; all the times he's managed to get off work purely by bastardising the pronunciations of Rosh Hashanah and Shauvot. Bill both listens and eats reverently, making a startling moan at the first forkful. ("Oh, sh-shit. This is really— this is f-fucking good!") (Stan swells with smugness. "I told you, soup doesn't count,")

Plates are taken away and delivered by Richie who squeezes Stan's shoulders, clicking his tongue in his ear. They spar with their spoons over cheesecake as Vic studies them impassively with his chin in his hands from the kitchen— when Moose, smelling of locker room and jello shots, lumbers over to Stan for a new set of cutlery, it's _him_ , not Mike or Richie, who hops over the kitchen bar and sits him down with a muttered " _easy_ , man, I've got it,", shooting a meaningful look at Stan as he returns to his station. It's the same look that Richie's been giving him all day—

 _You owe me,_ it says.

Richie doesn't let either of them leave the table and disperse at the end of it, bringing the bill to them when they're done. Stan tries very hard to look dead ahead when Bill picks up the encyclopaedia, tries to give it back. "H- _here_ —"

"You can have it," says Stan. (Richie goes bug-eyed with mirth at his side.) "Georgie might like some of the others later on," he adds, a little lamely, pointing out a photograph of an owl ripping into a rodent. "Snowy owls. Terns. Snow buntings."

"You're fucking rambling," hisses Richie, and Stan elbows him. Bill smiles, small and delighted.

"Th-thanks, Stan." He makes to leave, and then— "you've got s-something. Lemme—" and then he's reaching forward,

(Stan goes very very _very_ still)

the pads of his thumbs at Stan's lips, 

_(oh)_

smudging something away with his thumb. "—there. S-sorry,"

Stan breathes

_"Thanks,"_

a little flatter than he ordinarily would. He hopes he's not red. He hopes. Bill's not nearly as red as he normally is when they make any kind of contact, so god does he hope—

"See you n-next time?"

"Yeah. Next time." It's the first time anyone's touched his face since _Bev_ that he hasn't wanted to scrub the touch away with steel wool, hot water. Bill turns back to smile at him twice before leaving, serenaded by the fucking hellish chime of the door.

"I cannot fucking believe I had to watch that." — _This_ from _Victor_ as he pushes past them in his green faux-leather and non-uniform jeans, a shock of pale hair and silvery pinpricks of piercings against Stan's _hothothot_ face. He goes a little soft as Richie crows jubilantly. "Keep it out the damn backroom, Uris," he eventually says, (Richie: "You think he's fucking _Bowers_ , or what?") and then he's out the door of Neibolt and into that of the Trans Am parked outside. Stan waves numbly, catching a glimpse of Vic pressing an uninhibited, open-mouthed kiss to Belch's jaw before they speed away. Quietly, treacherously, he aspires to that kind of thoughtless affection— Vic could’ve hit Belch’s arm, or bitched at him, or kissed him. It would’ve all been the same.

Richie slings a heavy arm 'round his shoulders, suddenly all-there, clearing his throat. "He's right, though— I can't fucking believe it, I can't believe you, he wiped the cheesecake off your mouth, you should've licked it, or _kissed_ him, or something— I'd be twenty bucks richer. Twenty bucks more to _Rrrrrrrrio!_ " His inflection distorts into one of his Voices, and that, a rarity, now, is what wakes Stan up. He shoves Richie away, almost into a tired-looking Owen Phillips, who'd shrunk in on himself at his table and stayed that way the first time the Trans Am'd pulled up to Neibolt. 

"Twenty bucks for me," says Mike, coming up at his back. He rests a hand on Stan's shoulder. "Shit, you talked about birds to him for an hour." He sounds a little awed. Stan is a lot awed. 

 _"But I don't like him, Richie!"_ simpers Richie in a grotesque rendition of Stan's voice, hands fluttering over Stan's other shoulder. Stan is smiling like a damn moron as he hits him again.

* * *

[ **trashmouth** > **stan the man** ]

 _trashmouth_ : hey stanny  
_trashmouth:_ i wont be @ work next fri  
_stan the man:_ Why  
_trashmouth:_ i have a date ;))))))  
_stan the man:_ Lmao  
_stan the man:_ With who?  
_trashmouth:_ eddie  
_trashmouth:_ try not 2 miss me 2 much  
_stan the man:_ K

 _trashmouth:_ also can u add me back 2 the chat  
_trashmouth:_ eddie kicked me out

[ **stan the man** added **trashmouth** to _cool guy club_ ]

 _big mikey:_ there he is  
_eddie:_ ffs

 _stan the man_ is typing...

[ **trashmouth** set eddie's nickname to _eddie swaghetti_ ]

 _trashmouth_ : i missed u guys

 _stan the man_ is typing… 

 _big mikey:_ ffs stan spit it out  
_stan the man:_ Why am I in your roommate chat  
_trashmouth_ : its not a roommate chat  
_trashmouth_ : no petey here  
_trashmouth_ : its a friend chat  
_eddie swaghetti:_ pls dont add peter   
_eddie swaghetti:_ he replaced my juicer w/ an expensive one and now im 2 scared 2 use it

 _stan the man_ is typing… 

[ **big mikey** added **pete.gordon** to _cool guy club_ ]

 _pete.gordon:_ what the fuck  
_big mikey:_ hey pete  
_pete.gordon:_ hey hanlon  
_trashmouth_ : omg petey

 [ **pete.gordon** left the chat]

 _stan the man:_ Goals  
_trashmouth:_ do u want me to add big bill

[ _stan the man_ left the chat]

* * *

Friday rolls around easy enough, the days running into each other as day shifts become evening ones. Mike’s back home for a change; Richie and Eddie, at the arcade most likely, the former replaced by Eddie Corcoran and another new guy, an Adrian Mellon, neither of whom Stan has to spare a second glimpse or thought as he sets candles on tables. On Fridays Vic’s replaced by one Gard Jagermeyer; it’s for that reason alone that Richie tends to fall sick on Fridays more than any other day. 

A couple done-up for the weekend slide into the table by the window. Stan peruses them sadly, thinking on Bill. Both Eddie and Richie’d offered his contact details a day before on call, (well, Eddie had; Richie’d bitched about Peter reclaiming his room for a solid hour, —”it’s not fair, I was Mike’s friend first, and now we’re all split up the middle— me ‘n’ Eddie on one side, Petey ‘n’ Mike on the other, what the fuck?”— only shutting up when Eddie’d dropped his juicer in the  background of the frame and _screamed)_ and he’d gone and rejected them, and, well,

he’s regretting it a little bit.

But Stan likes what he and Bill have, insubstantial as it is. _Figs and cherries,_ he remembers, and is smothered in delight. Half of him feels like a fool for spilling so much; —giving his brother an encyclopaedia on birds, hell— the other half compels him to do a little skip over Neibolt’s uneven, sloping floor. From the kitchen, Gard shoots him a perplexed look, all slow blinks and gradual, displeased, mouth. The terms he’s on with Gard are nowhere near as friendly —friendly meaning assured to be non-violent— as those he’s on with Vic, (and, by extension Moose and Belch) so he tucks his head down and goes back to folding napkins.

The evening drags on miserably, with Stan entertaining himself with the herb plants lining the coffee bar, occasionally succumbing to a cookie sneaked out Richie’s favourite jar. In comes Greta Bowie, hanging off Sally Mueller's arm with an uncharacteristic lovesick smile on her gloss-slicked mouth; out go a motley group of tenth graders, tittering with effervescent young love. He’s about to truly slide down the rabbit hole and start busying himself counting sets of cutlery, nails in the floorboard, sprigs of thyme, when the door swings open, knocking aggressively against the wall.

Bill, looking just as appalled as Stan is by the clamour, stumbles in after it. There’s a light in his eyes that goes on like a flashlight, twice as bright as any of the candles, when he sees Stan, dimming slightly when all of Neibolt goes quiet around him. “S-sorry,” he manages, and crumples into the table nearest to him.

This can't be a coincidence. Stan ambles up to him a touch leisurely, heels clicking on well-worn hardwood. With Richie and Mike gone, this is his turf— even if he has no idea what to do with it. He searches Bill for intent, _(how hard is it to ask a question, just one, Denbrough)_ coming away with a newfound appreciation for the turn of his nose, his freckled cheeks, his bow-lips in the feather-gentle candlelight. “No date?”

Bill surprises him, pulling the menu from his fingers, aglow in a touch of cheek. “E-eddie’s replaced me,” he admits, “—h-hope it was worth it,”

“With Richie, it rarely is.”

His laugh scuffs Stan’s candle-warmed cheeks. “B-but now I-I’ve got _you_.” His eyes sweep over the counter before settling on Stan. “—To _myself_ ,” he adds, voice a little breathy with disbelief.

 _That you do._ “Enjoy it. I’m out at seven-thirty on the dot.”

Bill checks his watch, (his watch, when he has his phone in his other hand) laughs a little shakily. It’s six forty-five. “I-I can eat fast.”

He chooses paccheri with roast eggplant ragu, smoked paprika and cardamom on cauliflower, a slice of cherry solozhenik. Stan swipes his fingertip across each item with tenderness but pauses on the eggplant, the solozhenik, not trusting himself not to grin outright. He must do so anyways because Bill shifts, going straight-backed in his seat, fulsome in a way Stan can now pin down to either a) veneration b) flirt, or c) a combination of the two. “Y-you haven’t let me d-down yet.”

An inordinate level of affection tugs at his lips. “Yet.”

He smacks into Corcoran once on his way to the kitchen, and again on the way back. Bill notices both times, snickering a little at his expense.

“I’m not going to help you eat this this time,” is what Stan tells him as he sets his plates down, taking care to orient them at the very centre of the table. Surprising no one, he does anyways. This time there’s no Richie or Mike to deter patrons, no Vic to study him and offer sardonic looks of encouragement from the kitchen, but they manage well nonetheless: Corcoran and Adrian give them a wide berth each time he passes, and past café hours Neibolt exudes a friendly summer-somnolence with new patrons few and far between.

They eat relatively quietly, the silence broken only by snickers on Stan’s part at the face, bizarrely pensive, Bill makes when chewing, and on Bill’s part, a curl of hair that doesn’t stop swaying into Stan’s eye until he puts his cutlery down to forcibly scrape it away from his forehead. When they do talk, it’s about Richie.

“You’re going across half the wuh-world with him,” ventures Bill, a touch timorous. Stan’s— unsure, unsure if this is okay, if they’re close enough, (but they’re friends, they better be friends) but leans a little ways forward _to_ flick the lock of hair that hangs about his half-timid gaze anyways, fingers sticking at the pads to Bill’s when he twists it safe behind his ear. “Half the world,” he repeats, and Stan’s heart stutters when he doesn’t. “That’s so cool, sh-shit— for a year. A whole year.”

Stan winces. “I know. I’m going to have to bring a Prozac prescription.” A part of him hisses _toomuch_ but Stan refuses to validate it and Bill to confirm the scuttly, spider-crawl of dread, only taking a too-big mouthful of cauliflower, never looking away with his hard-mouthed thinking-face as he chews.

“Y-you guys’re— _close_ , huh,” he scuffs his mouth with the back of one fine-boned hand, eyes going big and daring. Stan twists wordlessly in his seat, twining his chopped-up paccheri ‘round the tines of his fork. He’s three turns in when Bill tacks on a hasty, “I-I don’t mean it like that. H-he seems l-like a good guy.” It echoes of something more, of a different sort of conversation and Stan isn’t a fan of wishful thinking but when he looks up there’s something at once hopeful and determined in Bill’s face, doing funny things to the line of his mouth. “He _is_ a good guy,” he amends, after a stretched-out moment, gummy in the pleasant, lissom dim. Stan brings his fork to his mouth, doesn’t count how many times he chews.

“You never knew him in highschool.” Bill looks at him inquiringly, eyes shiny with the same interest, adoring, fixation he’d regarded Stan with as he rattled on about birds off a pocket-book. “Spending three years surviving Bowers could bring you close to anyone.” In reality, it’s this: bitching aside, it was always going to be him and Richie. He’d— gladly take on Mike but thought of swapping Richie out for anyone still reeks of wrong and all those nights he’d spent hovering by the light switch and his medicine cabinet, pricked by glass-jagged uncertainty. "—Hey. We don’t judge. I’m in it for— birds and Richie wants to be DJ Trashmouth across the Pacific.” He makes a vague, self-deprecatory gesture that Bill must find apparently charming because he chortles — _chortles_ — briefly into his share of the meal.

“D-DJ Trashmouth. He’s not that b-bad,” _(how precious)_ “and, well— E-eddie really l-likes him.” And that definitely resonates of another conversation, but Bill doesn’t elaborate, so Stan doesn’t bring it up. He pinches his crumpled collar and fingers the flimsy material, giving Bill a droll look.

“Well, yeah. I’m counting on him to take him off my hands before I have to break both his arms.” That’s— actually an unbearable thought, (what would he even do without Richie?) so he pulls himself away from it, studying Bill instead. The candlelight plays whimsically across his —handsome— features, hollowing out his freckled cheeks; Stan staring at Bill staring at Stan— this is what they have, interrupted only by Corcoran sweeping past them with bemusement furrowing neatly his brow, and Adrian with a charmed smile.

Seconds tick past on the clock of the counter. At ten past seven as Stan distresses his napkin with his thumbs, Bill finishes his paccheri, head snapping up so fast it gives Stan whiplash. He looks like he’s contemplating something, turning it over and ‘round in his big, slender hands.

Stan thinks about touching them again. He doesn’t.

 _(ohmigod Bill,_ wails Richie between his ears, _maybe we’ll be up to holding hands next year!)_

He thinks, forcefully: _shut it, Richie._

“I-I w-wanna sh- _shhhhow_ you something,” decides Bill. Whatever he’d been mulling over from palm to palm dissolves into a wiry, jittery, sort of excitement. Stan arches an eyebrow and Bill’s teeth (sort of oversized, in a way that suggested they might’ve been straight-buck when he was eight or nine) come out to press at his bottom lip, worrying it cherry-red. “I thuh-think y-you’ll like it,” he adds, quieter. Stan smiles as winsomely as he can.

“Yeah. I’m sure I will,”

Adrian brushes his shoulder as he passes for their plates and this time he complies, rising from his chair with an apologetic glance cast at Bill. Gard is standing at the forefront of the open kitchen, sliding a pretty petal-decorated plate back and forth across the bar. He scarcely gives Stan a second glance, but for an uncomfortable second his restless gaze settles on Bill and his smile thins, widens.

“Get ‘em, Jew-boy,” he chuckles, but lets Stan take the plate of solozhenik from him without much protest. As he makes his way back to Bill, he can see that he’s wrestling something out of his bag, laying it out across the table. As he draws closer, he can see it’s a book.

Bill goes a little bug-eyed when he sets the plate down in front of him; Stan laughs at his unfamiliarity with the sprigs of lemon verbena and thyme, the pansy-petal garnish, swatting the spoon out of his hand when he pokes at a stray clove pod. “It’s good,” he insists. “I promise.”

“N-no, I tr-trust you—” (Stan’s heart knocks about against his ribs) “—I-I just. It’s so p-pretty. I feel like I should b-be taking a photo. — _Multiple_ photos.”

Stan rolls his eyes. “Just eat, Bill.”

And he obeys (though not without a great deal of poking at the pansies beforehand) with the same reverent delight, groaning into his spoon. Stan lets his gaze fall to the book tucked under his arm, a square foot, almost, in size, bound by thick, metal, rings. “Light reading?”

Bill startles like a deer and for a second Stan thinks— _dreads_  that he’s done something wrong, (like the lights and the Prozac all over again; no one needed to know about that, least of all his parents all those months ago) but then he’s smiling, the curve of his mouth sharp and shy all at once, compelling. Infectious. He scrapes his plate out of the way, laying it flat on the book. “I-it’s my skuh- _sketchbook_ ,” is the breathy little stammer he offers by explanation. “Here—”

The way he looks at Stan seems to make it obvious that he’s expecting him to open it, so he does. It’s a worn-down colossal thing, dog-eared with long years of use and love, obligating Stan to handle it like a newborn baby. He folds over the cover, flips through the first few pages of hands and faces, (and here Bill leaps red-faced from his seat, a bashful, frantic edge in his voice as he turns over chunks of pages, mumbling, _“ah— n-no, not that—”)_ catching glimpses of geometric designs and landscapes and flora and charcoal portraits before—

—a wing here; a claw rendered with diligent precision there. Uppertail coverts sketched feather by feather in pastel; watercolour featherdown plating page-wide pencil sketches of— birds. He recognises the crest of a grey-crowned crane, the piercing gaze of an osprey, and then more familiar, immediate faces: snow buntings, snow owls, ruddy turnstones. He wets his lips with his stone-heavy tongue. Fixes Bill with a long, wide, imploring look.

Bill clears his throat with hands balled into loose-curled fists, looking a little exhilarated. “I-I went through the book,” (and his voice is almost swallowed by the drip of wax down the candle for how small it is) “—and l-liked some of the ones you showed me. So I, uh. I drew them.” His eyes search Stan for approval, recognition, anything. Stan doesn’t trust himself to speak as he traces the arching hooked beak of an olive-backed sunbird drawn in yellow highlighter and pencil with painstaking care. Opposite from him, Bill’s smile blooms, grows, —rightly— taking Stan’s wonderment as some sort of affirmation.

“A-and then I-I w-went online and I— found some others. S-so I—” he pauses to laugh, like all of this _(a solid chunk of a solid sketchbook)_ had been on some kind of passing whim when the delicateness of each sketch, the sheer tenderness put into each and every minute detail, proves so inarguably otherwise, “I drew 'em too.” His hands flap a little vaguely about him, but he’s still studying Stan. “Thuh-thought you’d l-like ‘em.”

Honestly? Stan could probably kiss him. There’s a smear of cherry and cream across his top lip from the solozhenik. He could.

But he doesn’t, instead expelling a shuddering, smiling, breath. “These are really good, Bill.”

“Thuh-thanks—”

“No, you don’t— they’re amazing.” He mirrors what Bill’s doing with his teeth, biting down on his lip as if he can suffocate the grin that pulls from cheek to cheek. He doesn’t think he’s ever smiled like this in his life. “I love them. I do.” He pages through sketches of robins, pukeko, egrets.

He actually think he might cry a little bit.

( _He really really really fucking likes you Stan,_ and, great, now he’s got Eddie’s voice going at it in his head as well as Richie’s. Richie’d probably get a kick out of that.)

“I-I’m g-glad.” He unsticks his chin from his neck, smiles, smitten, at Stan. Stan smiles back just as stupidly, fingers protective claws on the margins of the sketchbook.

In his peripheral vision, he can see Adrian grin a little dimly, a bottle of wine tucked under his arm. Really, he doesn’t know what it is about him and Bill that makes them so appealing to Neibolt’s wandering attentions, but it seems not even Gard’s immune: he snorts into his fist from the kitchen, loud enough to shake Bill out of his Stan-induced stupor.

But not Stan out of his.

He still feels a little wet in the eyes as Corcoran sweeps up to them, regarding Stan a touch too knowingly, and Bill with a big, white-toothed smile. “Can I try and guess who’s paying?”

Bill blinks. Stan — _gentlygentlygently_ — flips the sketchbook closed, biting back a laugh, because it’s just dinner —hell, he shouldn’t even be sitting down— but there’s no question that what they have going on’s a little more intimate than last time, with Richie pawing at him each time he passed, the door-tune going off every few seconds. With the candlelight going and their knees bumping under the table, it’s almost— virtually— _basically_ a date.

This comes to Bill in a sputtery inhale of breath. Stan regards him with his head cocked and his chin propped up on his fist, very much endeared. “M-me, it’s me,” he says ‘round a laugh. “I-I’m paying. S-Stan’s—”

“—keeping you company,” Corcoran finishes. He punches Stan in the arm. “Whatta _gentleman_.”

Stan agrees.

When seven-thirty rolls around, he’s almost sorry to leave— only almost, though, because if the way back home from Neibolt is shitty in the daytime, it’s shittier in the dark. He tells Bill this as the other looks on, mock-disappointed, even sorrier to relinquish the sketchbook. They both hover over it, Bill out of ownership and Stan— Stan to page through it once— twice— ten times more and immortalise its contents in his head, and when his hands flicker over Bill’s, he lets them linger there.

Bill curls them into his, squeezes. Stan smiles like a silly little kid at the  floorboards, some kid with a schoolboy crush, aware that Gard’s most likely losing his shit in the background, that, come morning, Vic and the rest of Neibolt’s part-time staff will be too. That’s how they end up holding hands for the first time over a book, Stan thinking on the portraits he’d glimpsed in its first few pages, Bill’s smile warm and inviting, waiting for him to speak.

In the end, he sucks it up. “Do you—” he starts, letting Bill have his sketchbook, memorising the arcing flight of egrets and doves rendered in ballpoint and Indian ink, the soft-weighted warmth of his grip, “—ever draw people?”

Bill’s smile goes so wide Stan fears it might burst.

* * *

It says something about him that the first thing he thinks of the moment he steps through the door of his apartment is to call Richie. Admittedly, he’s not sure what— but still, it says something. Richie’s never failed him yet, even if in highschool what he was doubtlessly the most useful for was as a diversion for Bowers. He kicks his shoes off against the wall, (then, on second thought, retraces his steps and leans them up neatly) redoes his top two buttons, sprawls onto the bed. He catches a glimpse of himself in the front camera as he gets his laptop open and is truly sorry on Bill’s behalf for how he looks: weighted bags under his eyes the sickly hue of ripe plums, cheeks white with exhaustion, kippah not as straight as he’d like it to be atop his head. He matches, almost perfectly, his apartment’s greyed and run-down character, and hates himself for letting himself think it, eventually resorting to rubbing at his face as he waits for Richie to pick up, trying to suffuse a little life into himself as owls hoot idly outside his window.

In the end, it’s Eddie who answers, which isn’t entirely surprising— sometime in the past week he’d become something of a fixture to Richie’s side in a way that could be taken as almost purely practical if Stan hadn’t known it to be romantic beforehand. He seemed to act, in between bickering happily with Richie and dithering about holding his hands, as something of a third arm, a consummate Stan when Stan or Mike themselves weren’t around to tell Richie when to tone it down already. (A permanent armrest, Stan dares, feeling a little bad for it.)

Eddie’s sitting on a couch, and Stan can see the history channel blaring on the TV in the background by an assortment of potted succulents, the room brightly-lit, visibly well-kept. (If anything, he can respect Peter Gordon’s taste in decor.)

“Oh, hey Stan.” He leans out of the frame; Stan catches a glimpse of— a cast and cocks his head to the side, trying to get a better look at it. “Richie! It’s Stan!”  

_“Gimme five minutes!”_

“I cannot believe you’re still in the fucking bathroom—”

“...Is that a cast?” Eddie’s eyes whip to him and after a moment of visible deliberation, he lifts his arm back into the frame, exposing what is, indeed a cast. Oh, hell.

“Yeah, I— I fell off the boardwalk, on our date.” His voice begins to climb, reaching a new octave with each word. Stan, who has never felt so sorry for anyone in his life, regards him quietly as his chest begins to rise and fall with the force of each heaving breath. “The doctor said it was a clean break, so it’ll be okay in a few months, but I won’t be able to do, like, any practicals in the meantime, and my mom is going to _lose her shit_ when I go back home for Thanksgiving, and—”

“—We had to take him to the fucking emergency room!” Richie bounces into the frame, enviably buoyant, all spindly arms slung carelessly ‘round Eddie’s shoulders and glasses crooked on his nose. “He wouldn’t let me, you know, pop it back into place—”

“—You fucking fell and you pulled me down with you, and I _‘wouldn’t let you pop it back into place’?_ You are fucking incredible—”

Stan levels a withering look at Richie, who retaliates by jutting out his quivering lip, a picture-perfect pout. Stan’s learnt to do his best to look at the good side of people, but still. _Still_. “He tried to do that to me when we were kids. It turned out to be just a sprain, but.” _But_. Despite the wry smile that he lets curve along his mouth, _it had not been a good time;_ Eddie seems to realise this and turns on Richie with a look of horror, jolting with a series of passionate gestures that almost knock the laptop shut.

“Are you fucking serious? This happened before? I almost had a fucking asthma attack, I could’ve _drowned_ , and you were trying _to pop it back into place_ —”

“Cool it, Eds.” Eddie’s mouth gapes in what looks to be the beginnings of another hysterical tirade before Richie draws a palm across his cheek to rest a thumb at the corner of his mouth in a gesture of casual affection, placating him with an almost practiced ease. Contentment drifts over Eddie’s delicate features and Stan— Stan envies that, really, though not so much that he misses the mischief that overwhelms Richie’s dopey fond face in an instant. “It could’ve been worse. Like, I think I tipped your Prozac into the bathtub—”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Histrionics boil under his fine-boned features but he seems to take the hint, and wriggles out of Richie’s arms, careful to maneuvre his broken arm away from his wandering grip. “If I have to get another prescription, I swear to god—”

“Baby, _I’ll_ be your Prozac!” And Stan can’t help himself, he snorts, muffled by the strangled laugh that rips out Eddie’s throat, the both of them convulsing as Richie looks on, grinning jubilantly.

“Beep beep—”

“Yeah, beep fucking _beep_. That got old in highschool, Stan.” He relinquishes Eddie with one last muss of his hair, a wet, open-mouthed kiss to his cheek —”It’s okay, Eds, I can be your _Viagra_ , too!”— that Stan has to endure all four torturous seconds of before Eddie manages to escape, still spluttering to himself. They both wait ‘til he’s well and truly out of the shot before Richie turns a kittenish look on him framed by his glasses, resting his chin in his palms.

“ _So_.”

Because Stan was raised to preface intent with courtesy, he doesn’t rise to the bait, instead making himself comfortable on his threadbare sheets on propped-up elbows. “How was your date?”

Richie, to no one’s surprise, least of all Stan’s, has no such sense of premise. “You know how it was, Eddie broke his fucking arm and I had to change into three different shirts so I didn’t freeze my dick off, how was yours? The one fucking time I call off work, Stan—”

“It wasn’t a date.” It comes out rapidfire, an automated response. Richie gives him a borderline sombre look. Stan wishes he were there so he could flick his nose, straighten his glasses, punch his shoulder, anything.

He wishes he were there. He wishes—

“Fuck you, _‘it wasn’t a date.’_ Jesus.” His voice takes a nauseating turn, climbing up the rungs of tease, hoarse on each moan. “Oh, _not a date_ — it didn’t mean nothing, _mi amor,_ you’re the only one for me—”

Stan cuts him off with a cynical look. “What was that?”

“Pete watches a lot of telenovelas.” _(oh, of course)_ “They’re pretty good. Geez, Stanley, it’s okay— we know!” He crowds himself against the cam, treating Stan to an uncomfortably high-resolution glimpse of the inside of his shirt, his glasses, perched askew atop his nose. (Stan really, _really_ , wishes he were there.) “Eddie says he showed you his sketchbook, like— if that’s not a euphemism for his dick, I don’t care. Did he pay?”

Stan cradles his temple in his hands, stamping out the smile that pinches threateningly at his cheeks. “It was not a date—”

“Hey, Stan-the-man, that’s not what I asked, hey—” He cuts himself off with a baleful look over his shoulder. “Hey, Mike! Can you turn that down for like ten seconds? Stan doesn’t know how to speak up.” In the background, Mike calls out an echoing sorry through a smile Stan can’t see but sure as hell can hear, and the sounds of the French revolution dwindle, leaving between him and Richie a yawning silence. He shifts, a little uncomfortably, in it.

“Stan?”

Stan rolls his eyes, fixes Richie an irate look. “Fine. He paid.”

He’s deafened almost immediately by a exhilarated whoop as Richie throws his arms up, out, almost knocking the laptop off the couch again. In an instant, Mike’s at his side, followed soon by Eddie, who’s got a handful of pill bottles nestled into the crook of his broken arm.

“Oh, wow,” says Eddie, a little glum, a little awed. “Dude, not even I’ve seen in in that sketchbook, man. What was in it?”

Richie crows, —“yeah, was it porn?”— and is promptly cut off by a swat to the arm courtesy of Mike. Stan kneads at his temples as he elbows him back, the three of them jostling about on a couch that looks far too small for their combined anticipation.

“Birds,” he manages, after an intolerable stretch of bustling. “He draws birds.”

Eddie’s lips part a little, looking charmed but confused; Mike makes a similar expression, without the abject bewilderment. Richie hoots.

“ _’But I don’t like him, Richie, I don’t’_ — you’ve got to tell me that’s a euphemism for his dick, or _your_ dick, _please_ —”

“That’s really sweet, Stan,” interjects Mike. Stan smiles at him and Eddie nods furiously, squeezing himself into the pauses between Richie’s peals of gleeful laughter.

“Yeah, he’s really good. It’s really cute he’d let you look at them. I mean it, Stan, really.” Somehow, Stan’d already known that. Eddie offers him a small, reassuring smile that he does his best to return as Richie, done with his hysterics, moves a little out of the shot, giving him a better view of their surroundings, and—

“The fuck’s so cute?” The voice’s nasal, barely on the edge of being unfamiliar, but Stan’s hands are making fists, curling into his sheets, before Peter Gordon’s over-gelled head’s even half into the shot. Peter claps a hand onto Mike’s shoulder, rubbing it, the two of them performing an elaborate-looking handshake before he shifts fully into the frame, perusing Stan with a irreverent, haughty look.

Stan returns it to the best of his ability. There’s not a lot he has against Gordon; he’d fallen in with Bowers in highschool, only to fall out again a year later, and it’s for that reason  —that and his proximity to Richie, and, more notably, to Mike— that Stan allows himself to be scrutinised. For some reason, be it courtesy or recognition of this simple fact, Peter lets him win their staring contest, filling the frame with a watch too big for his skinny wrist as he lurches forward.

“Heard you got a boyfriend?” he croons, cajoling Stan into— _something_ , he doesn’t know. Mike gives him a mild, friendly, look of warning.

“He’s _getting_ a boyfriend,” insists Richie, tugging him out of the frame. Stan rolls his eyes pointedly.

“Shut it, Richie.”

Peter gives him a laugh for that, deflating the situation. “You get it, Uris. Get some.” He shifts about in the frame, grinning, and Stan mirrors the movement— big fucking mistake. Drawn by the empty space above Stan’s shoulder, Peter follows the absence he’d left, going bug-eyed at Stan’s bare-walled, Spartan existence.

“ _Christ_ , Uris, that’s some shithole you got there—”

Stan’s heart crawls up his throat. He jerks to obscure Peter’s view but it’s too late, the damage’s been done, and now Richie’s dominating the frame, Eddie at his shoulder, visibly disconcerted. They’re seeing the drab wallpaper, the neat piles of cushions Stan uses in place of a desk, the sad stacks of old textbooks, his half-open, half-empty closet, and it makes him _tired_.

Richie’s giving him a strange, pensive look when Stan forces himself out of the crooks of his elbows, puffing stray curls of hair out of his face. He looks him dead in the eye and swallows, long and pointed, a little daring. Peter, seemingly aware of his misstep, intervenes before Richie can act on it, jabbing one hand into Richie’s collar, another into Mike’s. Stan misses most of his explanation trying to avoid the inarticulate mouthing Richie’s making at him, catching only a flippant “these boys owe me a damn fucking fair Monopoly rematch, don’t they?” before he’s out of view, bodily hauling Mike and Richie after him. Stan gives Mike, who seems to anticipate having to play damage control, a little nod in recognition, and then it’s just him and Eddie; Stan in near darkness, Eddie in harsh white light.

His hands brace his temple against the migraine that threatens to erupt. He’s not a good liar, nor does he enjoy it, but there’d been a careful, methodical process to smoothing over the less appealing aspects of his solitary existence. He’d broken his mother’s heart when she’d come to pick him up for Sukkot last year with the rest of the family, and she hadn’t wept, but he’d refused to look her in the eye as she dissected his surroundings, fixating on the steady curl and uncurl of his fists, his worn-down nail beds.

 _No wonder,_ she had lamented, _no wonder you couldn’t take it anymore._

(He values his peace, but putting himself together while in a vacuum hasn’t been— fun.)

Eddie regards him quietly, big eyes making a wounded expression, as if he’s personally hurt by the incomprehensibility of Stan’s situation. (He’d lived with his mother prior to moving in with Mike and Richie, hadn’t he? Stan hasn’t known that kind of constant companionship, contact, for— a _while_.)

“It’s clean,” he tells him, worn blunt. Eddie snickers a little shrilly.

“Yeah, I can see your dust buster in the corner. Nice choice.”

In the quiet that follows, he lets spill his armful of bottles, seemingly disquieted in the space left by Richie. Stan watches him swallow, wanting it to end the call, too reluctant to return to silence. “Stan—”

“It’s fine, really.”

“You know, if you need anything—” He makes a vague gesture at one of his bottles of Prozac, and another foil-wrapped rectangle beside him. Klonopin, Stan figures. Xanax, even.

He appreciates the gesture, but nonetheless fixes Eddie with an appraising look, smiling sardonically. “I’ll break your other arm, Eddie, I will.” _Thanks_ , is what he tries to say through it. _Thank you._

Eddie seems to get it. “You know you’ll have to beat Richie to it.” He musses his own hair absentmindedly with his cast hand, as eager to change the subject as Stan is. “I know you didn’t want Bill’s number, but—”

“I will, Eddie.”

Both Eddie’s hands come up in a placating gesture. He’s smiling, sure, but something about is curious, a little daring. Not entirely politely so. No wonder Richie likes him. “You could message him. He’s always online, like— you could. And he’d, he’d want to talk to you.” He adds, a little hastily. He tugs at his collar with his bad hand, mulling something over in the other. “I think he’d really like it.”

Stan— thinks he would too, then of what it’d involve. In highschool, he’d refrained from dating around, —unless Richie counted, and that'd fizzled out by tenth grade anyhow— unsettled by the alleged power trip, of flinging himself off the rails into circumstances beyond his control. He hadn’t had much time in college, either.

“He’s, uh, _billiam_ on messenger, if you need him.”

If he needs him.

In the end, that’s what seals the deal. He ends the call at half-past eight, giving him fifteen minutes before he has five minutes to get into the shower, and spends it dithering over his laptop, hovering over snippets of Bill Denbrough’s life. In the end, he relents. In the end, it doesn’t matter if Bill wants his number enough to ask for it. He has Richie to testify to the fact that Stan never texts back.

[ **billiam.denbrough97 > stan.uris**]

 _billiam.denbrough97_ is typing ...

 _billiam.denbrough97_ : gn

 _billiam.denbrough97_ is typing ...

 _billiam.denbrough97:_ ♥

Circumstances beyond his control, indeed. Stan rumples his sheets into his fist, goes to bed with warm fuzzies and a grin that stretches fond across his face even as he’s clamping down on it.

* * *

He tries to get to Neibolt early the next morning, to no avail: betrayed by an easy, dreamless sleep and routine, he wakes up the same time he always does, heads out the same time he always does, arrives the same time he always does. Whereas preferable to being late, (the equivalent of which is Richie being early) it means that Richie and Mike are there waiting for him by virtue of a shorter distance to bike, peering at Stan over their chained bikes with feet tapping restlessly the gravelly ground as he affixes his to the rack.

Mike nods in greeting. Richie uncrosses his arms. “Hey, it’s Stan-the-man.”

“You’re gonna wanna hear this,” he’s saying as Stan’s pushing past him to the backroom, “We have like, a plan. A fucking plan, can you believe it? Me, with a plan? You wanna hear it? You’re gonna move in with us.”

Stan, piqued, casts him a weary look over his shoulder, searching through the dim for his apron. “I’m not going to move in with you, Richie—”

“Why the fuck not?” Beside him, Mike twists into the space between them, humming quietly to himself. There’s something about them that suggests routine— and one well-rehearsed, no less. Stan’s not sure whether to commend them for it or not, choosing to count reasons off his fingers as Richie bores holes into him with his eyes.

“I have an apartment,” Richie makes a face.

“You have a fucking hole in the ground. Seriously?”

Stan sticks out another finger. “I have a contract on the apartment, I can’t just—”

“You have a contract on a fucking hole in the ground, so what? Just stop paying rent and move out.”

“Richie, I’m not paying rent on—”

“Yeah, you’re not paying rent. We’ll figure it out.” He jabs an elbow into Mike’s side, who offers him a contemplative look. They sweep forward as one, crowding Stan as much as they can while still allowing him comfortable space— the space he needs. “We’ll ask Marcia. She’s a really nice chick, you know. Not my type, but—” He dithers as Mike assembles his own uniform, drawing close and close and closer ‘til he can brace his head against one of the shelves, all the shafted light from the backroom’s sole window illuminating his strange, pensive face. “We’d figure it out— you could move in, in like, a week, please. You’d have a whole fucking room to yourself—”

Stan makes a goldfish face, mouth open, hands unsuccessfully tying sailor’s knots into his apron strings behind his back as he steps back, back, back, stumbling over bags of produce, the uneven flooring. “Richie,” he warns, trying to assert himself. “I don’t need to live with you. I don’t, it’ll be— Christmas and we’ll be out of here. There’s no point.”

Richie’s raking his hands through his hair, darting glances at Mike for support. For a moment it looks like he’ll relent, and then— “sure, Christmas, unless you have a fucking meltdown, Stanley.” _And I won’t be there, and you’ll be alone, and it’ll be like before, Stanley; it will._ All this lingers in the space between them, flashing across his glasses’ lens as Stan curls a clammy palm over the doorknob to the backroom, crushing himself against the door on the other side of which he can hear the familiar, sleepy, early-morning bustle of Neibolt: cutlery clinking, chairs scraping on hardwood. Vic, bitching to himself in the kitchen.

Mike clears his throat. Stan should’ve known better than to expect him to demur, regarding him with a tired eye as Richie makes room for him, drawing back from Stan’s space. “We don’t want you to be alone, is all.” He and Richie share a look, and he corrects himself. “Lonely, I mean. We’re your friends. We don’t want you to be lonely. And we didn’t know—”

“—that you lived in a fucking shithole, what the fuck?” Richie, again. Stan cracks the door ajar, letting the noise bleed in; it does precious little to deter him: Richie surges forward in an instant and curls his hand over Stan’s, pulling it shut again. “It’ll be so fucking fun, Stan, please. You remember fun? C’mon, Mike’ll cook—”

“I can make soup,” Mike adds helpfully, catching Stan’s eye with a soft-edged, infectious smile. "And sandwiches."

“Oh, yeah, sandwiches. Goddamn unholy fucking sandwiches— PB and onion, man, what the fuck? Oh, Stan, I’ll let you and ‘n’ Eddie make fun of me for a month, free of charge. You don’t have to leave your fucking room, Stan. It’s not like Pete does either— he heard it through the grapevine that Marcia left him for Moose, and he’s been throwing a temper tantrum for, like— like, a week, so—” He pauses his tirade to suck in a breath, mouth hardening as Stan’s opens, gapes. His hands pin Stan’s arms to his sides like cast-iron vices. “Fuck me, Stan, you won’t even know we’re there. You can throw a thousand fucking tantrums, I swear—”

“Richie, I don’t need—”

“Like _fuck_ you don’t!” His hand finds Stan’s again, twisting into it atop the doorknob. The look he gives him just about spears him through the heart, the flippant, self-assured curve of his mouth rendered open, like a wound, a little sad. He’s smaller than Stan, somehow, but his presence is an indomitable force, sucking all the air out of Stan, crushing his resolve. “I’ll be your fucking Prozac. C’mon, Stan. _Please_.”

 _Please, Stan. Please. For me._ That’s all it takes. Stan crumples. He’s going soft, complying within even an hour, but it was always going to be Richie. Mike reaches out, laying a weighted hand on his shoulder.

“Can I give you a hug?” When Stan nods, albeit a little hesitantly, he disentangles his hands from his apron strings and steps soft toward him, sweeping him into a warm, solid embrace that’s just firm enough to tread the line of comfort without outright smothering him. Stan eases into it with a sigh more relieved than weary, petting his back, wary to touch more than what he figures is appropriate, polite. Richie apparently has no such qualms because he rushes forward in a surge of untucked, fluttering shirt, his long loopy arms coming ‘round to crush Mike and Stan in a suffocating bear-hug. The two of them eclipse him almost entirely but it’s an alright sensation, only made unpleasant and even then barely so by Richie’s restless hands scrubbing into Stan’s shirt.

“Okay,” says Stan after a couple minutes spent huddled in the dim, tucking his hands to his sides. “That’s enough.”

“Bull,” snaps Richie. Stan shoots him a disdainful glance. Mike grins, but separates them, earning himself an aggrieved look from Richie.

“Yeah, we should—”

He’s cut off by a hard knock on the door. Richie whines. “Five minutes, come on!”

“Enough with your damn orgy,” drawls Vic from the other side, and Stan laughs, a huffy little thing, flattens his shirt with his palms, and sweeps into Neibolt.

* * *

Eddie Kaspbrak, saint among men, delivered unto the three of them (but mostly Stan) for the sole purpose of keeping them upright throughout their shifts, enters Neibolt a little past two. Mike’s manning the kitchen; Stan, the counter, crouched over the ground searching for his latest bird book. His arrival, announced by the crash of the glass door against the wall as he throws himself into it by his good arm, disrupts whatever avid conversation Richie and Vic’d been having, —”see, you need _six_ for an orgy,” “fucking _christ_ , Tozier!”— the grin that erupts across the former’s face nothing short of blinding.

“Eddie-spaghetti!” Eddie’d been making a beeline for Richie, but, at that, he diverts his course and makes for Stan instead, slapping his palms onto the counter with enough force to make the cookie jar jump. He doesn’t think there’s anything that can possibly prepare him for what Eddie’s about to say: he looks like he’s about to have a seizure, a meltdown, an aneurysm. Stan relates. Lord, does he relate.

“Bill’s got something on today,” Eddie tells him unprompted, a mite apologetic. Before Stan can respond he changes his course in an instant, features scrunching into a tight little ball. “Fucking _guess_ what I had for dinner last night.”

Stan guesses, and does not like where that train of thought is taking him. He casts Richie an exasperated glance, and Richie jolts with a mad hoot of laughter, detaching himself from the kitchen to slide up to Eddie. “Yeah, Eds. What did you have for dinner last night?” He looks at Eddie who glares back at him, diminished even further by the force of his outburst, then to Stan. Stan pinches the bridge of his nose and refuses to comment. “He had soup, by the way. Pumpkin soup, and bread. Tell me what’s wrong with soup, Stan!”

“Yeah, soup. Mike’s soup— by the way, thanks for that, man.” He nods at Mike, who grins and gives him a wave. “Soup, after you tried to feed us all fucking— cheese. Just cheese, no bread, _nothing_ , by itself, at one in the morning. Ask me when I had dinner last night, Stan.” Stan does. “ _Two in the fucking morning,_ because Richie—”

“—because Richie couldn’t buy you dinner before you broke your arm?” Richie clutches his chest, makes a little wheeze. Stan rolls his eyes right back into his skull. “Ah, you hurt me, Eds. What do you have against cheese?”

“I’m _literally_ lactose intolerant, you could’ve put me in the _fucking hospital_ , you know—”

Stan braces himself for the volume of Richie’s resounding wail, drawing back, but still gets a faceful of Richie’s hair when he surges to the counter. Eddie makes a strangled, startled, shriek, and then Richie’s twined ‘round him, struggling not to slip on Neibolt’s uneven floorboards. In between the inevitably, bubbly, “cool it, Eds,” and the crooned mawkish _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forgive me_ s, there’s the following: Richie’s arms coming to rest ‘round Eddie’s waist, giving his cast ample room; his chin in his hair; Eddie blustering, flushing, scuffing his shins with the heels of his shoes but not doing much to pull away when Richie kisses the crown of his head. Stan averts his eyes with a small smile, Eddie’s protests all but drowned by Richie’s promises _to make it up to you, spaghetti-man, promise._

After a great deal more public affection than Stan —and evidently Eddie— are suited to, it’s revealed that this involves both dictating and buying Eddie’s brunch. Stan ends up covering for him as he sits opposite Eddie at his usual table, watching them eat and bicker over a plate of pancakes divided neatly in two, Richie eating those tainted with ricotta, and Eddie the rest. Vic, ordinarily jeering, contemptuous from the kitchen, passes Stan on the way outside for a smoke, nabbing a cookie from the unmanned jar before wrenching the door open. Its brutal, jarring tune is far too much shit for him to deal with this early in the day.

“Make sure they keep it out of the backroom,” orders Vic, and he’s gone in a gust of warm wind and light.

* * *

The next day isn’t nearly so pleasantly summery, and Stan’s fingers, sweat-slippery, slide along the rim of the cookie jar as he pulls it out of Richie’s grip. He’d, to Richie’s obvious and vocal amusement, chosen to apply a little gel to his hair, just to keep it off his forehead, and now not even the two open buttons he’s afforded himself down his shirt can combat the stickiness of his scalp, the uncomfortable occasional jostle of his kippah. He reasons that there are good people and bad people, and for the sake of moral complexity, people pleasantly ambiguous in their daily goings, and then— then there’s whoever decided to install within Neibolt’s oppressive wood-walled confines a _new_ furnace when it was renovated, but no other air conditioning. He’s got the tip jar, usually at the side of the counter closest to the door, manoeuvred to rest against the bread cabinet instead as to make the most of the rare breezes through the cracks in the door and windows, and fiddles with it now; Richie, who’d ordinarily scoff at him for being so pedantic, moans miserably into the coffee bar, his glasses well on their way to fogging in the syrupy heat.

“My blood sugar levels are way too low to deal with this,” he complains. Stan cards his fingers through his hair —still uncomfortably stiff— for the thousandth time and crumples over the counter, unwilling to look at him for the movement it’d require, and the fresh exposure of his skin to another, possibly sweatier, part of his shirt.

“You sound like Eddie.”

Richie huffs. “Black shirts, man. Who designed our fucking uniforms?”

Mike passes them smelling of honey and bread and overripe fruit, sleeves rolled up past his elbows. “At least we don’t have to wear clown costumes, or something.” Richie makes an anguished sound and he pets his back and takes a cookie out of the jar, slipping a five-dollar note into the tip jar with a questioning look at Stan. Stan has to reach pretty deep inside himself for the effort to give him an approving nod. Before returning to the kitchen, Mike breaks off a piece, offering it first to him, then Richie when he declines, his ability to nod again spent.

“I love you, man,” Richie calls after him, garbled through a mouthful of chocolate chip. Stan tries to angle himself a little further into one of Neibolt’s windows, squinting against the light, certain he’s leaving the counter wet as he trails against it to look for the second bird book he's left at Neibolt this week— this one, a tropical edition he'd made the grave mistake of leaving in Moose's general vicinity while on break.

He’s going to take a thousand damn showers when he gets home. He’s sure he can even afford to— Stan’s no great believer in the extent of his fortunes, or luck, period, but he takes a moment nevertheless to reflect on the grace of Marcia Fadden for talking Peter out of the petty, Scrooge-esque pursuits he’d retained from highschool, and on Richie for bringing her into his life. He’d left all the lights in his apartment the other day going ‘til it became unbearable, the prospect of no longer having to dwell in unsettling dim for the sake of his power bill quite honestly a little exhilarating. He'd taken a full hour out of his schedule to bathe.

For that, he bestows upon Richie a sharp prod to the shoulder, doesn't scold him so harshly. “You’re spitting crumbs everywhere.”

Richie turns to regard him in a fluid, oozing moment. “Fuck off.”

They’re so far gone that when Belch Huggins arrives at Neibolt and has to jam the door open to fit the combined bulk of himself and the bags in his arms through, Stan almost thanks him, they key word being almost; by his side, Richie goes into thrall, greeting him and the gust that rushes in an enthusiastic moan. “Hey, delivery-boy! Come here. Lemme kiss you this time.”

Belch doesn’t seem to hear him —a turn of the head reveals earbuds from which witch house blares like the manifestation of Stan’s approaching headache— but pins him with a long, baleful look. He might’ve pinned Richie with something else, but then Vic’s hopping over the kitchen bar, broad skittish grin entirely at odds with his wan face, and taking him to the backroom through the messy clusters of tables and chairs, and— now Stan’s grinning almost just as jauntily, because in comes Bill through the space Belch’d left. He tugs, bashfully, at the collar of his flannel, taking in Stan’s sweaty shirt, his collarbones slick as his gelled-back hair.

“I l-like your hair.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Stan warns. He feels like he’s going to sweat through the gel. Realistically, Bill will say something sweet and irresponsibly, inexplicably charming; Stan will be charmed, and will continue to sweat, and will have to take up residence in the relative cool of the backroom, where, knowing them, Belch and Vic will have left their indelible mark.

“It’s v-very fifties.” Never mind.

“Please, don't ever say that again." Stan should just move on from that, but the skin at the corners of Bill’s eyes creases when he smiles and he’s fidgeting in his sneakers over Neibolt’s worn welcome mat, and he’s got his sketchbook tucked under his arm, and— well, he’s come quite a bit from remarking on his plausible cuteness to Richie’s gleeful skepticism. He’d spent more time than he should referring back to Bill’s single goodnight message, pausing between calls home and to Richie to glance back at it; it’d been a somehow— welcome interruption to the ordained rigidity of his nightly routine. What they seem to have —if Stan isn’t hoping like some schoolboy, because he knows himself, he knows his shit, unfortunately— has gone from traipsing to outright tripping into the strange, once-distant territory of _something more,_ the concept drawn-out and italicised as he darts from thought to thought and smiles at Bill smiling at him.

And then there's Richie, slipping between the two of them, grinning brightly. "Yeah, right? Did Jews even, like, exist in the fifties?" Mike's making vaguely amused _please-stop_ motions in the background, but otherwise lets Richie plough on unattended, and in a moment there's an arm slung 'round his shoulders, Richie's cheek pressed to his. "Hey, Billy. You figured out Stan's making you get all the expensive shit yet? It's his money-grubbin' ways, he can't help it—"

 _To be Richie,_ thinks Stan, and have the stones to insert himself into situations like Stan'd invited him to. (On retrospect, he kind of had.) "Only because he feeds Eddie all the cheap shit," he tells Bill, and presses a palm into Richie's cheek, turning him away. "Some of us have taste. Lunch, right?" The clock above the counter reads a quarter to twelve, just short of reasonable. He tries not to let it bother him, but when Bill makes for the bread cabinet, Richie swoops in, rubbing both their shoulders.

"Big Bill, didn't you say you wanted to check out that bakery Stan was talking about? That Jew one." He darts an inviting look between the two of them and Stan glares, mouths _what - are - you - doing._ "Stan's on break, right? It's not even lunch yet."

Stan is not on break, and Neibolt is nearing peak hour, anyways— this much becomes evident as Sally Mueller and Betty rush in in a mad sprint for seats, the latter blinking shyly at Stan before allowing herself to be dragged off to the table by the backroom. "Mind the clown," he calls, but she trips anyways. Both Richie and Bill wince emphatically before turning back on him. Bill's doing something with his mouth at once hopeful and assured— it's a smile, a real nice one, drowning out the clatter of plates and cutlery.

"I g-guess — I guess, yeah. Th-that'd be nice." He backs away from the bread case, pointing himself towards the door, and Stan steels himself against the rise of Richie's shoulders against him. "I'm— keen for b-babka. Good babka."

Richie thumps Stan on the back, pitching him forward. "Aren't we all?" He's unfazed by the contemptuous look Stan gives him, scrubbing the back of his shirt with an exuberant fist instead. "Jesus, don't look at me like that, Stan. I'll cover for you, promise." He pouts. "Don't you trust me, Stan?"

A look over his shoulder reveals Vic and Belch're done with their backroom business and have taken up residence at the table closest to the kitchen, Vic smoking openly despite the cooks' disapproving glances, Belch making a lot of open, passionate gestures over the table. He really, really doesn't want to risk it. He ordinarily can't afford to risk it, but— Richie snorts, dragging him close. "He's not going to give a shit. By god, Stanley, we all know you need to get laid! Please," he adds, voice climbing an octave, uncharacteristically small. "Please, c'mon. Take a fucking break. At least don't make Big Bill wait, yeah?"

Bill laughs a bit at that. "I have the time," he insists, turning out his pockets. Stan mirrors the motion. "I— w-wouldn't mind ssssome babka. If y-you're free."

That does it. Richie, chin rested atop his fist, regards him somewhat triumphantly as he undoes his apron (this alone earns him an approving look from Bill —"I-is that a L-Lark's Head?"— and a horrified croon of "you went to Jew Scouts, too? Fuck, that's perfect!" from Richie) and tucks it under the counter. Vic and Belch are still talking enthusiastically as he makes his way over to them, their conversation forceful enough for Stan to catch brief snippets of what they're saying as he lopes up to Vic's side of the table.

"I don't see where else he's gonna fucking go," Vic's saying, carding his hands through his frazzled-looking undercut.

Stan taps his foot, a little impatiently, unseen by Belch who's groaning into his hands. "Yeah, fucking neither, but we— I mean, if he's not ready. He can't, you can't—"

"There's nowhere else we can fucking put him," spits Vic. "He can't drive himself through school, he isn't. Not unless you wanna give him Amy—"

"Fat fucking chance."

"'xactly." He seems to notice Stan, then, who's twisting his fingers into each other, sorry for the lack of his apron. "Uris, what's fucking happening?"

"I'm out for a break— Richie's covering." He moves to mirror Vic when he leans forward in his seat, to no avail— he sees Bill and snorts through his teeth, considering Stan with a dark, broody expression on his wan face.

"Half an hour for a cigarette," he decides, eventually. Stan is all too happy to comply, nodding in a way that passes as grateful as he squeezes past a grinning Richie on the way out, Bill in tow.

That's how he ends up walking down Neibolt Street with Bill, squished close to him to avoid the throngs of crowds heading both ways like the most awkward couple ever. Despite this, it's alright— when they reach its intersection, Bill clears his throat. "Is, i-is this o-okay?" The sunlight stings his eyes when Stan turns to look at him, but in that distracted moment, Bill loops his fingers into his, squeezing once, so it's alright. Stan grins wryly, giddily.  

"Yeah," he breathes. "Yeah, it's fine," He might go up in flames if he wasn't so sweaty, but Bill doesn't seem to mind. They make protracted conversation about Mike's classes, (which Bill is aware of through his rapid-fire recital of dates and events from the kitchen, and Stan through calls in the early hours of the morning spent lamenting the perils and trials of taking history in university) the authenticity of Neibolt's challah, and Eddie's broken arm (he's at the doctor's trying to get painkillers, Stan learns— it's why Bill'd come so early. He'd been a good fucking friend and come with him, and then he'd figured he was _so_ close, so—) before coming up to the bakery, a monolith shrouded by trees wavering slightly in the heat. He turns his head to Bill, punctuating it with a squeeze of his hand.

"After you,"

Bill frowns. "I-it feels like I'm guh-gonna go in and you'll b-b-bolt." (Stan— does not blame him for that. Like Neibolt, it's a spectacularly rundown, shitty, little place, not-quite-fully renovated from its old beaver-trapping days.) "K-kidding."

"I'd never run away from good bread." He puts his free hand on one side of the door; Bill, on the other, and together, they push it open. Unlike Neibolt, the bakery's a quiet, pleasant, place inside, lit warmly and empty save for— Marcia manning the counter. She greets him with a big, toothy, smile that promptly sharpens when she sees Bill, and Stan rolls his eyes. Bill still hasn't let go of his hand, and starts to pull him along as he drifts between the shelves, free hand skittering over their contents. "I-I don't know what a-any of this is. Or— I know s-some of it." He gestures at a plate of cupcakes. "M- _mmmmmuffins_."

Stan takes the liberty of taking the lead, forging ahead into neat rows of cabinets and plastic-wrapped pastries. He covers— "hamentash, challah, moon cakes. The rye here's alright, if you like stale bread— it's been better at Neibolt since they moved Mike into the kitchen, I guess. Anything sweet's got a fair chance." He passes another shelf chock-full with trays of beignets and mille-feuille, ornate chocolates drizzled with honey, before Bill begins to lag. Looking back at him, Stan can see he'd snagged a little basket off one of the shelves, as in the process of filling it with pastries. His mouth opens automatically to snark but Bill cuts him off with a huffy _"Hhhhey,"_ of protest, flipping his hair out of his eyes with a dramatic turn of the head in a charmless, endearing movement. "I'm s-serious, I'm _hungry_."

Stan curls back around to him, the packet poking out of the top of the basket catching his eye. Bill shimmies to the side before he can tug it out so he settles for a raised eyebrow, free hand braced on his hip. "Please don't tell me that's a cupcake—"

"It's a m-muffin." Stan's certain it isn't, but they tread on, finding what they're looking for without much difficulty: Stan tosses into the little basket two loaves of babka, making it a third at Bill's imploring look, ("I tr- _trust_ you," he insists, and Stan sort of wants to swipe his palm across his mouth and wipe off that winsome smile before he disintegrates, _god help him)_ and they make two open circuits of the bakery before coming back to Marcia, who eyes with unadulterated glee their overflowing basket. Onto the counter comes the babka, the muffin, as well as an assortment of goods Stan's never given a second look. "Say hi to Pete for me, dear," caws Marcia as they leave, eyes sliding off his to rest on his hand, sweaty in Bill's. Stan gives her a half-hearted wave and lets himself be dragged out the door.

The journey back's less awkward than to— comfortable silence's a little more viable when Bill's got his hands in thirty dollars of baked goods, doing his best, Stan notes, to chew gracefully under Stan's eye, occasionally tearing off a piece of whatever he has to offer it to Stan. (He accepts the challah, macaroons, moon cakes, but refuses to have any part of the cupcake, to Bill's dismay. _"It's a f-fucking muffin, I swear—")_ When he finally works his way down to the babka he makes a noise of ecstasy and Stan elbows him, but takes the shredded pieces from his sticky fingers nonetheless. Resisting the urge to wipe away the chocolate smearing Bill's mouth isn't so hard, or so he thought— he must've been looking or something, because Bill ducks his head down, scrubbing at his face with the back of his hand. "You're good," Stan tells him when most of it is gone and the look of total mortification on his face intensifies so greatly he has to bite back a laugh.

Bill stops him outside Neibolt's door, pulling him a little to the side of its steps to avoid the next incoming throng of patrons. Stan's heart jackhammers with dread, with anticipation, against his ribs.

"I-I wanted to ask you _sssssomething_." Stan crosses his arms, aloof as he can manage, prompting him onwards. "I know you're b-busy. R-Richie t-told me you were moving in with him." Pity creases, if only briefly, his bashful features and Stan laughs this time, leaning against the wall. "B-but I w-wanted to— ask. If y-you'd like to g-go out sometime. A m-movie or something,"

Stan smoothes a palm over his breast, feels his heart go _thumpthumpthump_. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Richie pressed to one of Neibolt's windows by the nose, hissing _getsomegetsomegetsome_ into the glass. He turns away from him, looking carefully at his feet. "I'd really like that, Bill," he replies, and feels like he's confessing something. "That'd be nice. A movie sounds nice." He trusts himself not to freak out when he looks up again, and almost loses it (he feels as if he's been doing a lot of that, too, recently) because Bill's vibrating a bit, working his fingers into his palms in shuddery fists.

His voice is bright and exuberant and totally unbelieving. "Gr-great. I-I'll worry about tuh-taste, genre later, huh?" Stan cracks a grin.

"I'm going to live with Richie, Bill. I think that's proof that I'm not that picky," He sees Richie shrink away from the window, and looks over apologetically at Bill. "Speaking of. I'm gonna go in first." Bill lets him disentangle their hands, all the while looking sorrier than Stan is for it, still a little disbelieving as Stan's smoothing out the curve of his mouth. He's greeted by a blast of heat courtesy of Neibolt's unventilated confines, and by the aberrant twang of the door-chime that doesn't bother him quite as much as it used to. Richie actually has the gall to try and look unassuming at him, leaned against the window he'd used to play peeping Tom on Stan while Mike, towelling flour off his hands, laughs off whatever he's saying from the counter.

Stan nods at him first in greeting, than at Richie, whose voice is climbing in a way that Stan can only describe as petulant. "Listen," he's telling Mike, " _Listen_ , it's fucking weird, is all—"

"—It's really not that weird. Having friends isn't weird. Hey, maybe _you're_ weird." Stan looks between Mike and Richie, and the latter pulls himself off the counter to wrap around Stan, one hand a safe brace on Stan's hip, the other adjusting his glasses.

"Need your input, Stanley."

" _God_ , Richie—"

"No, really need your input. I would've asked you earlier, but you were busy blowing Big Bill, so—"

_"Beep beep—"_

"Can it, Stanley." He clears his throat and dons a voice an octave deeper than it should be, the hand that isn't wrapped around Stan's waist describing a leisurely, flamboyant arc through the air. "Mike buddying up with Peter all of a sudden— is it weird or is that _weird?"_

Stan opens his mouth, shoots Mike an _are-you-serious_ look. Richie continues, unattended. "Y'know, on this day— on this fuckin' day, let it be known that me 'n' Mike, _Mike 'n' I,_ Stanley, are Petey's best buddies, or something. Didja know that? I sure as shit didn't."

"People have _friends_ , Richie," interjects Mike with good humour, and Richie shushes him with a finger.

"So, like, Stanley. 'pparently Moose and Pete've been going on a bender recently. 'pparently our man Pete's been all kinds of pissed off at him over this Marcia business. And today— today, not even fifteen minutes ago— Moose comes up, right? You following, Stanley? Moose comes up, right, and puts his hand on Mike's shoulder, like _this_ —" He scrubs furiously up Stan's shoulder, scraping the hot back of his neck, "—oh, _yuck_. You're sweating. Anyways, he does this, and he asks— he asks Mike, _is Peter mad at me?"_ Richie's voice is half Moose's rolling baritone, half a grating falsetto that makes Stan screw up his nose. "Like either of us fucking know how Peter is, the fuck? Except— except, we _do_. Because Mike knows, and Mike tells him _no, it's okay._ Like, buddy-buddy _. 'No, pal, he's fine. He's just having a not-so-great time at the moment.'_ Like, what the fuck? Since when do we know how Peter is?"

"You live with him," Stan points out.

"Yeah, so? Since when does Moose — _Moose_ — ask Mike — _Mike_ — how he's doing? Since when does Mike know how Peter is? You tell me that, Mikey, you fucking tell me that. It's _weird_."

Mike flicks a fistful of flour into his face, an action that Stan wholeheartedly endorses. Bill comes in, then, and in between getting a good eyeful of Richie's ghost-white face and his proximity to the window, puts two and two together. He purses his lips. "J-jesus, Richie. W-were you w-watching us the whole t-time?"

Richie darts back from Mike, who flips his towel into his face. "Yeah, Richie. _That_ sounds pretty weird."

"I had to make sure he wasn't breaking Stanley's heart, man. And I have to make sure you get something, Bill, or else you're out on your ass. Paying customers only. Don't look at me, look at Vic the dick." To Stan he gives a wink, shimmying up to him. Stan takes the broom he offers him tiredly, playing out the whole exasperated song and dance. "And you, man, you owe Betty a hello. I told her you'd be on cleaning duty. Bend over some more, won't you? Give the girl what she wants."

Stan heaves out a weary sigh but allows him to be shepherded over to the other side of Neibolt as Mike leads Bill to his and Eddie's table. They exchange glances of varying degrees of exhaustion and amusement over the noisy clutter of tables and then Stan ducks his head down and begins to sweep around legs and tables, putting away his silly smile —for Richie, for Mike, for _Bill_ — for later. The ground where Vic and Belch'd been bears a carpet of ash, still pungent, that he quickly loses himself to, trading friendly smiles for Betty's over-the-shoulder grins every once and a while, careful not to scuff the floor. It's easy work, easy and gratifying, and a good half hour passes before he makes it around to Bill's table again. He'd gotten a drink somewhere along the line, an iced chocolate by the looks of it, and he's halfway into a sip before he spots Stan and darts out with a foot to hook him over.

He bends down as Stan approaches, reaching into the big, duffle bag hung over his shoulder, and withdraws the sketchbook. Without a word, Stan takes the seat opposite him. The sketchbook's bulk is somehow familiar, _comforting_ to him as he takes it from Bill's hands and skims his fingertips over its unnamed leather cover, its ringed spine. Bill seems to recognise this as a display of intimacy,  _(and, well, it sort of is)_  because he begins to chew at the inside of his cheek a little shyly, long, artist's fingers curling gently over the rim of his mug. "Y-you can open it, you know." There's a frothy smear of chocolate and cream over his top lip that Stan spares a little more attention than he'd like to admit, and he has to look down, to the sketchbook, to dim the grin that grows from Bill's vague splutter of awareness as he scuffs his mouth with his sleeve.

He opens the book like he'd handle a— newborn, or something, infinitely careful. The pages of egrets and snow owls, swans and tui greet him in slightly more elaborate form, embellished in a greater range of colours. He traces the unmarked spaces of blank paper affectionately before turning the page, before reaching the section Bill'd barred him from before. It's filled to the brim with portraits: the first few leaves are charcoal sketches —Stan recognises a wild-haired Eddie, cheerier than Stan'd ever seen him— that soon give way to vibrant, waxy scribbles of a boy he recognises as Bill's brother, Georgie. From the margins pout sullen self-portraits that Bill seems all too eager to distract him from, and then he's turning a page and it's— _it's his own face_ that stares back at him.

It's what he had been expecting, what he'd been hoping for, really, but his breath still catches in his throat at his own tired eyes, high cheekbones, untameable, unkempt hair. Bill's got the finer points of his features in coloured pencils; the rest of the portrait is a watercolour, marred only —and even then, barely so— by feathery spots where the paints'd bled out their lines. Bill has him looking up, regarding something above him a little pensively, a small but hopeful smile etched onto his face in washed-out red and blue pencils. He feels himself smile the same way as he circles the bags under his painted eyes with a fingernail, glancing up at Bill. "Is this rainbow pencil?" He figures it is— the kind bearing six colours of lead, impossible to write, let alone draw, legibly in.

"Yeah. It's— _Georgie's_ , a-actually. I-I thought i-it'd l-look nice."

"It's fucking beautiful," Stan assures him. He can't stop looking at himself, immortalised on the page, his jawline done solidly, confidently. Just how long had Bill spent looking at him? He doesn't mind it, not really, but it seems like a hell of a long time. In all fairness, Bill'd been coming to Neibolt for quite some time, too, and it's not difficult to imagine Richie ripping photos from their shared album to send to him for reference. "It really is, I promise." He swallows, and tries— "Can I keep it?"

Bill's picking marshmallows out of his hot chocolate, seemingly desperate for something to do with his mouth that doesn't involve stammering or gushing. "S-sure, I-I mean. N-not that one. Not yet. I-I need it for something—"

"You need it for something?" It's then that he notices the notes scribbled into the margins, bleeding into the spine of the book. " _Clown eats child,"_ he reads, and stops. It's so incongruous he has to look at Bill, who does his best to appear unaffected by Stan's scrutiny. " _Clown eats child?_ Do I want to know? Am I the child?"

"Y-you're not thuh-the _child_ ," Bill assures him, fidgeting. "I-I'm w-working on something. I— I _write_ ," he adds, helpfully.

He writes. He draws, and he writes, and he's been coming to a shitty little half-restaurant in the shit part of the city for months to look at Stan, —work up the nerve to ask his name— and he hadn't even managed that. Stan really cannot help himself. Making eye contact with his bust one last time, he shuts the sketchbook, offers a smile filled with as much light as he can manage. "Tell me," he implores, and Bill opens up like he's blooming, without any resistance at all.

* * *

In Bill's own words, he's an author first, a painter and storyboarder second. "None of that sounds like commerce," Stan muses, like he knows anything about anthropology or commerce, and Bill snickers, downward.

"I-I don't think I was e-ever cut out for c-c-c-omm-mmmmerce." It looks like it hurts to say it; Stan knows that feeling. Stepping out of class had been arguably one of the better parts of his life, but his _parents_ — the look on Richie's face— well. What'd happened prior certainly wasn't. He cups Bill's hands with his own, who undoes his bitter smile. "A-and then, then Juh- _Georgie_ —"

Stan doesn't push it, so, instead they talk about his novels, his screenplays in progress. He learns, somewhat dismayingly, that horror's Bill's favourite, that he can't write poetry for love or money. "I-I have a b-b-blog, if you w-want to ruh-read any of it," he admits first, then, "I w-wanted to scare people, I guh-guess. A real fright. I w-wanted to write, for _Georgie_ , j-just to show that I c-c-could. Then I g-got— carried away."

 _"Clown eats child,"_ Stan recites. "No, that sounds pretty horrifying." Bill moans into his hands. "Hey, come on. Neibolt's perfect for that." He follows the mournful look Bill gives a clown propped up against the wall at the other side of Neibolt; the clusters of balloons affixed to every second chair. "If you ever film it, you know—"

"Y-yeah, I— know. You can b-be the lead."

"I think I could do the lights." And that's a sweet idea, even if Stan's not, on any level, the sort of person who could get anywhere into a camera's view without his teeth and forehead itching, and he'll be halfway across the globe in three— four— five _(lord, he hopes five)_ months. Bill recognises this, and he's so good about it, and Stan thanks him for it in his head and with his hands, palms hot on the cover of the sketchbook.

" _St-Stan Uris,_ l-l-light star. I'll see y-you in _Buh-Broadway, Ssssstanley_." He has a soft voice, charged perpetually with affection, and flicks across his plate his last marshmallow when Stan makes a half-hearted grab for it. He'd come into Neibolt for days on end for a damn _book_ , for an attempt for Stan's name; he's the sort of person who'd let Stan lead him into hell for an excuse to hold his hand, Stan thinks, the specific kind of person who could make the blind, wild leaps off the quarries Stan had to be forcibly goaded into by Richie.

Stan takes his marshmallow and Bill sips from his drink and when it's time for him to leave, he doesn't let Stan point out the cream across his lip; he's the kind of person to grin daringly at Stan's vague gestures at his mouth instead, to wrap his fingers one by one 'round the sketchbook's comforting heft when Stan tries to return it. ("Y-you can k- _keep_ it, if y-you want. I d- _don't_ , I don't need—" _"Clown eats child?"_ "W-well, not at the m-moment.") It turns out in Eddie's absence, Bill bikes to Neibolt, that he hadn't chained his bike up before coming in for bread and hot chocolate and Stan, and he's the kind of person to be mostly unbothered by this, anyways.

"I-I'll sssssee you l-later, Stan," and there's certainty in the upward turn of his mouth, the high jerk of his chin. Stan responds in a surge _("sure-Bill,")_ of shuddery laughter, and waves him away, lingering stupidly as Bill pulls his bike out of the undergrowth by Neibolt and rockets off with an exuberant _"hi-yo, Silver!"_ barely even half-stuttered.

"Fucking hell, Stan." Richie slithers out from behind the counter, self-satisfaction flashing across his glasses in the afternoon light. "Are you sure you're not doing him? You can tell me anything, man, I promise." His voice drops into a raspy rendition of Stan's, who hugs the sketchbook to his chest before Richie can make a grab for it.

"Certain," he sighs, and returns to his sweeping with Richie's low, disbelieving whistle hot on his heels.

* * *

Mike ends up calling him after his shower that night. (He'd ended up sitting slumped against the wall, over the plug, making a makeshift bath as the water sluiced all his sweat and weariness off his back. He'd almost fallen asleep there.) Stan answers him without a second thought, towelling of his hair as Mike peers at his surroundings from inside the frame. "It looks even more depressing than usual," he comments. "I didn't think that was possible, man. It looks like you've been living in a grave."

"Guess that means I'm just a little more prepared to die. I'm okay with that." Taking the laptop into his arms, Stan shows him around, illuminating the undecorated corners filled only by neat piles of boxes. "It's fine, Mike. I have less to pack up this way. How's Richie?"

"Cleaning up your room with Eddie. We have a surprise for you; you'll love it." He leans a little further into the camera, eyes bright with interest. If he was actually present he'd be nudging Stan with an elbow, bumping their shoulders together. Stan wishes he, he and Richie and Eddie, _all_ of them, were. "He freaked out about Bill giving you the sketchbook."

It's behind him now, actually, on his pillow, but Stan sees no reason to mention it and cracks a small, truthful smile. "I can see that happening. He's okay, right?"

"He didn't have an asthma attack or anything, so we think he'll be fine." His big, friendly-eyed gaze goes a little softer as he draws himself in, further into the frame, shrinking away from the bustle of activity behind him. "You guys _are_ dating, right?"

Stan stops working the towel along the scalp to shoot him a dimly unamused look, to which Mike opens his palms in surrender without shrinking back— Mike seems to have the uncanny ability to read him as astutely as Richie can without even half the practice, or, more importantly the urge to say something insufferably witty along with it. "You would, Stan. You know you would."

Stan relents. "If I had more time—"

"When you move in." Stan doesn't comment on the correction— Mike's not wrong, anyhow, and looks about ready to change the subject entirely before settling on one last amendment. "You're close, then." He shifts around, the camera blurring his bright-eyed, ruminant face before shifting back into startling focus. "You're closer to him. That's okay, right?"

His hesitation drips down the back of his neck, pleasantly lukewarm. "Yeah, we're close. Getting close." Slowly, but surely, getting close. Certainly closer than they'd been that first time Bill'd said his name and sent the both of them into wobbling, stammering raptures. "He draws birds, Mike. How could I _not_."

Mike grins at the wry self-deprecation in his voice, leaning his chin into his palms, shooting Stan a schoolgirl look. "It's cute, Stan," he insists.

And it is, so Stan wraps his head in his towel and plays along to Mike's soft, friendly laughter.

* * *

He's close with Bill, that much is evident. Getting even closer, however, seems to involve familiarising himself with all of Bill, which in turn involves one Georgie Denbrough.

Bill brings Georgie to Neibolt one lazy evening when Richie's been swept away by Eddie and Mike's playing assistant to the kitchen alone, too hassled to pay much mind to the inwards trickle of patrons, and Stan has to blink twice at him when he peeks out from behind Bill. He's familiar with Georgie by proxy, albums of him and Bill together and stories from Eddie, but there's really nothing that could've prepared him for the sheer power of his grin. Georgie Denbrough is smaller than his brother, the kind of boy to take his music with him wherever he goes. There's a thin, pale scar splitting his right cheek and he walks with a slight limp overwhelmed by his buoyant, swinging stride. Upon seeing Stan, he barrels into him with a force he wouldn't've attributed to a boy so small, and, well, Stan decides almost immediately that he'd do almost anything for him.  

Georgie orders off the brunch menu; neither he nor Mike have the heart to replace it as the latter writes cards for poached eggs and bread soldiers, giving Stan a small, reassuring, smile when Georgie waves him over. "Calm down, Stan. It looks like you're about to pass out."

And Stan hadn't known it was so obvious, but feels himself unravel anyways when Mike reaches over, smoothing out the lines in his brow with a thumb. Stan has no reason to be so high-strung, except he sort of does. Georgie means the world to Bill, he figures he plays the role of Bill's parents in whatever they've got going on in that he needs Georgie to _not_ dislike him, Stan never really bothered with babysitting or the new kids in highschool, and— when he thinks about it like that, he has every right and then some to be, at the very _least_ , a little uneasy.

"You calm down," he retorts, patting his wandering hands still on his apron. "I've never been calmer in my life. If I was any calmer, I'd be dead."

Mike steers him away with a gentle push. At their table, Georgie's admonishing Bill for something or other— upon Stan's approach, he cries "don't embarrass him, Billy!" with a big, toothy, smile that punches Stan in the heart.

Yeah, he would definitely do anything for this kid.

Bill's bag overflows with scraps of paper bearing his loopy scrawl and sketches that he smoothes out for Stan to see when he passes bearing their plates. Georgie, impossible to ignore by virtue of the eighties power ballads playing out of his stray earbud, has the grace to look away when Stan settles over Bill, his hands on Bill's broad shoulders, chin a breath of space from leaning atop his ahead. He recognises Richie amidst the sprawls in charcoal and ballpoint pen, face contorted in a strangely troublesome expression, then Mike, Mike's dog. Georgie's face beams, uninhibited, from bunches of receipts, sometimes drawn scarred, sometimes not. "I fell into the sewer," he chirps when Stan looks to him for clarity, and Bill's features twitch with guilt and dread, prompting Stan to squeeze a little tighter his drawn-in shoulders. "There's a big one across my arm. Does it make me look cool?"

"It makes you look like you were attacked by a cat," he responds, truthfully. Georgie giggles, a high, delighted thing.

"Or, or a bird, right? Like a monkey-eating eagle." His eyes find Stan's, searching for approval. Stan could wrap around him and never let go.

"A bearded vulture," he compromises, and can't not smile at Georgie's curious _ooh_.

"W-we had to t-take him in for stitches," Bill laments, voice going suddenly, undoubtedly, sad, and Stan realises that this, this is as much a part of him as it is of Georgie. This had certainly been enough to force him out of class, wherever anthropology might've taken him. "Th-they almost had t-to _t-t-take his a-arm off—"_

Georgie warns _"Billy,"_ in a plaintive tone and Bill's mouth crimps, pressing against itself. Stan holds him, wallowing in their shared discomfort at the unbearable, unthinkable idea of anything happening to Georgie, for as long as he can before he's called back to the kitchen. In his next circuit 'round he meets Georgie on the way to the bathroom, steers him from the backroom, lets him pass plates from him to the kitchen. Mike promises to teach him how to bake if he comes for lunch as Stan lights and relights candles, but Bill's eyes never leave him, following him from kitchen to table like a hawk's.

Afterward, when they're done with their meal, Stan affords him them a goodbye, propping the door open with his foot, unable to stop looking so damn fond of Bill and Georgie as they bicker over what to get out of the depleted bread case. Georgie bounds out the door with an endless exuberance Stan can't bring himself to envy or— or anything _(he's just a kid. Had Stan been that bubbly as a kid? Hell, had Richie?)_ but Bill drifts, earning him a good-natured grin from Georgie. "Be good to him, Billy."

Stan surprises them both with laughter. Bill's doing the thing where he's chewing at his lip, rolling over Stan's name in his mouth, and then in an instant he's rushing forward, his arms winding around Stan's and pinning them to his waist. It's a breathtaking, bone-crushing kind of hug, which is fine, because Neibolt's evening patrons could give less of a shit, and he has a grip that feels safe, and he'd rushed Stan like he wouldn't get another chance if he did anything else— which is honestly adorable.

But he can't breathe.

"Bill," he starts, and Bill very gingerly extracts himself from Stan, fisting his paper bag of baked goods. He cards a floppy hank of hair out of his eyes, starts to spit out a " _sssorry_ , that was, sort of—"

Stan's aware that the appropriate response, especially with Mike eyeing them over the kitchen, is _it's fine, don't worry about it_ — maybe even a jolly _nice grip!_ What he blurts out instead is "you can hug me, Bill. I don't mind." His voice cracks horrifically, like a schoolboy's. Bill rests his hands on Stan's shoulders, gives him a long, appraising, look, then hugs him again. Softer, this time, his breath warming Stan's ear. Stan pets his shoulder very slowly, straightening his godforsaken flannel.

By the time Bill leaves, his goodie bag scrunched into a unsalvageable ball in his fist, Stan's cheeks are beginning to hurt, the line of his mouth feeling taut, a little sore. He figures he must look like an airhead; he catches a glimpse of his reflection off the bread cabinet and wonders, briefly, if the amative, tender look that winks back at him from the glass has become a permanent fixture to his face.

Considering him, probably. Richie's going to lose his shit when he gets home, so he pinches at his mouth absentmindedly, straightening his collar, un-rumpling himself. When Mike finally gets off kitchen duty and they're half-out the backroom, so close to liberation, he finds himself with an elbow in his side and Mike's face in his, reading him like an open book.

"You've got a little something on your face," is the only remark he makes. Stan swats him with the back of his hand as he follows him out the door, almost tripping on the last step down.

It's been a good day, which ordinarily'd mean there's something unpleasant in store for him, (he likes to think he's a realist, but the only comprehensible pattern he's come to have recognised so far can be encapsulated in the idea that what goes up must come down; see: Richie gets a boyfriend out of a roommate, and subsequently owes to Peter Gordon an eternal, looming string of favours) but the journey to Peter's is uneventful, Stan and Mike cycling large circles 'round each other, throwing up slicks of water through the puddles lining the gutters. _We have a surprise for you,_ Mike'd told him earlier. They'd already ambushed him in front of his flat a day ago, Richie ducking under Stan's outstretched arm for his boxes of personal effects, not even bothering to sneak about. Stan, exhausted, had been about ready to mace him.

The surprise turns out to be this: Richie bounding out the building, across the pool to meet him, almost throwing him into the water with the force of his hug. It turns out to be a house key pressed into his clammy hand and Mike and Richie's cheeks pressed on either side to his as they frogmarch him into the elevator. It turns out to be the music turned down and fucking— clusters of balloons tied to chairs and tables stacked with food, Eddie attacking the white carpet with a vacuum cleaner around the legs and hissing "what the fuck, why are they so early?" when he sees Richie.

It turns out to be his room, the largest in the flat, lit brightly by a wall-length window, the bed and desk and cushions blocked into corners and against walls, clean and sharp, how he'd liked them. His eyes prick, slightly wet, as he looks to the ceiling, to the boughs of wire stretching from wall to wall bearing paper cranes in coloured paper. Richie curls an arm around his shoulders with a dismissive squeeze, but he exudes brightness. "Eddie did a fucking origami course, don't look at me."

Mike's got this hopeful look on his face as Stan takes half-numb steps forward, voice thick in his throat; they did this, _they did this,_ and they did it all for him. His clothes have been left, untouched, in a haphazard pile on the bed, but they've got his books in a gorgeous old case, arranged by what looks to be height, crammed against each other on their sides to fit.

Mike clears his throat. "I kind of just _guessed_ —"

Without hesitation, Stan grabs him, dragging him into a clumsy one-armed hug. _For him._ He shouldn't be so surprised, but he still croaks a little when Richie wriggles between them, the three of them twisted into a six-legged thing quickly losing its footing in the carpet. He can feel his arms around Mike, but Richie's got his chin rested on his shoulder, sort of sandwiched between or over the both of them, the frames of his glasses digging into Stan's chin. His stupid music's still going softly in the background, almost muffling Stan's wry mutter of, "I don't know what I was expecting."

"Oh, please," snorts Richie, slapping one of Stan's hands with his own, and Mike's with the other. "I'd never let anything happen to you."

And he wouldn't. And Stan knows that. _It was always going to be him and Richie._

Richie does, however, let Peter Gordon cheat his way through a game of Monopoly and totally obliterate he and Stan's team. They get put on dish duty as a result, which Eddie volunteers to help with, (purely out of Richie's disastrous track record with dish duty, he insists; he's _not_ being nice to the new guy, no way) and Stan does his level  best to talk to him over Richie's thrash metal without having to scream his throat hoarse.

It's when drying plates that Stan catches a glimpse of Eddie's sudsy hands wrapped in bandaids, the knuckles _sore_ , red with paper-cuts. He balks, then tries, "Origami?"

Eddie passes him a mug with a bashful shrug. "It wasn't so bad— I mean, the first one was kind of shit— paper cuts fucking suck, man— I mean, they don't get infected, but they _suck_ — but it wasn't so bad. Mike helped with the big ones, I just—"

And then Richie's barrelling in, spinning Eddie around by his waist. "And I kissed them better, didn't I, Eds?"

Stan throws the dish rag into his face and Richie gets a mouthful of soapy water.

* * *

_stan the man_ : Richie  
_stan the man:_ Richie  
_stan the man:_ Richie pick up your shit  
_stan the man:_ Richie

 _big mikey:_ richie we know youre awake  
_big mikey:_ its 4pm  
_big mikey:_ also we can hear you

 _trashmouth:_ leave me olone  
_stan the man:_ Richie  
_trashmouth:_ 13 yrs weve been friends and this is how u treat me  
_stan the man:_ 2 weeks Ive been living here and I want to move

 _trashmouth:_ eddie tell stan to leave me alone  
_eddie swaghetti:_ im not doing your fucking laundry richie pick it up  
_eddie swaghetti:_ do not fucking make me come in there

 _stan the man:_ Richie  
_trashmouth:_ ill do it 2mo  
_eddie swaghetti:_ youll make mike do it tomorrow

 _stan the man:_ Richie  
_big mikey:_ yeah richie

[ **stan the man** added **pete.gordon** to _cool guy club_ ]

 _pete.gordon:_ lads  
_pete.gordon:_ Tozier do your fucking laundry or i evict you

 [ **pete.gordon** left the chat]

 _trashmouth:_ thats unconstitutional  
_eddie swaghetti:_ it smells like someone fucking died in there

 _trashmouth:_ how do i block ppl

* * *

Life is— good to Stan from then on. (Life is picking up Richie's shit after him, reading, cross-legged, on his bed, feeling the wind on his face on the balcony and breaking pieces off his protein bars and throwing them down to the pigeons on the ground.) (Life is biking out each morning to Neibolt with Richie and Mike, plugging his ears against Richie's demands to race, race, race; speeding back with their asses off the seats to get home before Peter does.) (Life is eating takeout and soup out of their four remaining bowls after Richie's been on dish duty, Peter trading them the keycard to the pool for chore privileges, Stan reading with a sunhat pulled low over his eyes as Richie and Eddie try to drown each other and sparrows roost noisily in the trees above them.) Life makes sense, as much as it can living amidst the whirlwind of Eddie-and-Richie and Peter and Mike, Neibolt's good to him, Vic stops eyeing him over the kitchen counter and lets him take a couple days off for Yom Kippur without too much shit, and his account balance, for the most part, doesn't drop enough to worry him quite as much as it used to.

Bill's good to him, too, content with Stan's vague promises of making and keeping plans. Richie and Mike convince Vic and the cooks to let them play — _acceptable_ — music from the kitchen during the afternoon rush and Bill volunteers Georgie's eighties playlist as Stan lets a little more swing creep into his step whilst winding around Neibolt. On the days when Vic's not sober enough to mind, they utilise Stan's break and stroll to the bakery, swinging their linked hands back and forth carelessly— which is, in itself, _Not A Stan Thing To Do_ , honeying their fingers with pastries that Stan pawns the leftovers of off on Richie in exchange for letting him wipe his hands on his apron. Stan's no avid baker —despite Mike's insistence that baking's more of a, a science, one at which Stan'd be apt— but he lets himself be roped into catering for Georgie's fifteenth birthday despite burning miserably the hamentash he'd taken a crack at during the first week with Richie.

Together, Richie and Mike manage to rope Bill into an awful lot as well. "I'm staging an intervention," Richie declares one drizzly afternoon, "Hell, maybe you'll get a kiss out of it, man. Don't look at me like that!" and Stan's too focused on not falling flat on his ass to walk away swiftly enough to discourage him. Richie's at Bill's side in an instant of elaborate footwork, tangling his fingers into Eddie's hair, bent over the table. _"Game night,"_ Stan hears him propose. He tips a little too much sambuca into Mike's espresso shot as a result, responding to his low whistle with an apologetic look.

"You and us, Big Bill. Eddie can put on, like, a movie —some real good shit— and everything. It'll be fuckin' great." Eddie fails to make any real noise of protest, so Richie continues. Stan hands Mike his affogato with a little more force than necessary, but they're both too engrossed in what Richie's doing to care. "C'mon, Billy, your fucking novel can wait, man. It'll be fun. You remember fun? Stan'll be there."

Stan looks at Bill, Bill looks at Stan. Eddie hums into his spoon. "Sure, I'll put on a movie. But you're not allowed to choose the fucking playlist, if I have to listen to your shit one more time, I swear—"

"You love it, Eds. None of your fucking arthouse shit, though, amiright?"

Essentially, that's how Bill and Stan's first actual date is brought about: around Richie's desire to beat Stan in Monopoly, in Peter Gordon's condo, surrounded by absolutely all their friends— in fact, the latter becomes entirely more true when the day rolls around and none other but _Bev_ and _Ben_ show up at Neibolt, fresh out of Cambridge for a week.

It's a balmy day, and Stan is on counter duty when Bev pushes through the doors, Ben in tow, and Stan has to blink twice— thrice at her: in highschool, Beverly Marsh had been the throwaway lit match on the pyre of his senior year, consumed and gone too quietly, too quickly. She looks the same. She sounds— _feels_ the same as she chirps "something smells good," and sweeps in with a lazy afternoon breeze hot on her heels.

Stan bumps her fist when she passes him. "Thanks, we try our best." That's all he manages to get out before Richie comes at her with all the speed of a bullet, punching her into Ben.

" _There's-my-fucking-girl,_ I thought you'd forgot about us, _holy fuck—"_

And so had Stan, but he doesn't make a quip about it. In senior year, Richie'd inserted Bev firmly into his, and, by proxy, Stan's life. Stan'd been a high-strung thing struggling to pull himself together, having just grown accustomed to Ben as a part of their twosome, unsettled by her presence. Flighty as a fucking feather in the wind. He'd been— _unpleasant_ and Bev, perplexed, and by the time all was forgiven and talked-out over late-night choc shakes and romcom nights with Richie and Ben, she and Ben were off to _Massachusetts, Stan, but you know we'll always wait for you, right?_

He'd missed her, and she had flown back in a rush to hammer on his door and hold him when everything'd become suddenly too much, but, still. It never fails to make him feel a little warmer inside knowing that she'd missed them too.

Richie's got her in a weird, one-handed embrace, legs knocking against each other and soles slapping off the floorboards when they pass. "You get her all year, give me ten minutes, alright?" Ben stifles a little cackle and Stan rolls his eyes, which is— the most appropriate response he can give separated from Richie by a good foot of counter.

"You can't own people, Richie," he drones. Richie makes a dismissive gesture.

"Sure you can. Pharaoh and the Exodus. Don't fucking tell me that was your dad, Stanley," He pouts at Bev. "That's still his only comeback, can you believe it? That, and he rips off all of  _mine_ — like, if I wanted my own come back, I would've—"

"You would've wiped it off my mom's chin," finishes Stan. Bev heaves out a laugh, and then Richie's wrestling her out the door with his arm tangled into hers, a sardonic _"good job, Stan!"_ bit out his grinning mouth.

"You look good, Stan," calls Bev, and her fingers reach out, open and friendly. Stan mirrors the movement and their hands clap together, slipping off each other's palms, as he gives her one last doleful look and allows her to be dragged away.

Ben comes up beside him. "You do, y'know," Stan looks at him— he's still soft around the edges but exudes strength and an easy, fluid confidence as he sneaks a cookie out of the jar, chewing thoughtfully. "I mean, I'm not saying you didn't look good before, but—"

Stan shushes him. It's alright; he gets it. These days it's easier to carry himself high, to spread his shoulders out against promises of _nightjars, ibises, nightingales, falcons_. He reassures Ben, "Well, you look better," and Ben glows, then frowns.

"Hell, we really do sound like adults now, don't we?"

"...I think we sound the same."

Ben grins. "You would," he says, and Stan swats him with the back of his hand. With Richie and Bev on smoke break and the trickle of customers into Neibolt more or less stemmed, he's free to make introductions in between setting out plates and delivering coffees, knitting Ben and Mike's presences firmly into Bill's, and by extension, Eddie's. (Unsurprisingly, the coffee machine is down again, something neither Ben nor Bill seem to mind as the former finds the latter's table, sitting on Bill's provocation.) Ben and Mike hit it off instantly, as do Bill and Ben, and Stan almost gives himself a little too much credit, but when Bev comes back with Richie curled affectionately around her ("tastes like a cigarette should!" crows Richie, puffing smoke into all their faces) Stan learns that they're all familiar. That Bev and Bill have _history_.

"Third grade," offers Bev when he implores her. "My prince in elementary." (A collective look's shot at Bill.) "The second-best kiss I've ever had." Bill laughs throatily and Bev slings an arm 'round Ben's shoulders, and Stan is struck by the feeling that dawns upon him when a jigsaw comes together perfectly, and it doesn't matter that he'd already seen the finished product on the box because they're whole, _whole and as one_ , and—

Richie whistles. "Well, fuck me, Stan." He's still got a cigarette between his fingers, scattering ash over the hardwood that Stan'll have to sweep up later. Conspiratorial glances accompanied by wiggling eyebrows, toothy grins, are darted to Bev, who's looking at Stan a little quizzically, who's staring very hard at Ben's feet. Richie cups his mouth with a hand, leaning close into her shock of red curls. "It's not you, it's him. Stan the man's only mad he hasn't been able to mack on him yet, _aren't you, Stanley—"_

They all look at him, Ben the most contemplative out of them all. "Bill is a catch," he offers.

Stan leaves.

Vic's watching him when he heads over, leaned over the counter to the kitchen. He grins slyly when Stan heaves out a _"not you too,"_ weighted with fatigue, and doesn't push it.

But afterwards, there's Bill and Ben catching up over enthusiastically overstuffed pine flowers and a coffee. There's Mike fitting comfortably into their space, all three of them parting the river of afternoon babble running through Neibolt with their groans at Richie's approximations of his old Voices. Arguably most importantly, there's Bev loping up to Stan when he makes his way to the backroom for a break, folding her arms across her chest with gentle interest. "Bill, huh?" He looks up to her from an article on the roosting habits of barn owls, on an initiative to permanently fence off estuaries in the Chatham and Stewart Islands.

"Yeah," he affirms after a comfortable stretch of cool silence, a little shaky. "Yeah, Bill. He's been coming here for. A while." If that isn't an understatement. His jittery defensiveness turns out to be unwarranted: Bev smiles her megawatt smile, puts a soft hand over his.

"Your taste isn't half-bad, Stan."

"If you do say so yourself?"

"Hey, you can count yourself lucky. He's an alright kisser. Sort of a sub. I thought you'd be into that."

Stan bets he is and doesn't need to know, respectively. ("… _Bev_. What's that supposed to mean?") So they end up staying there for a while listening to each other ramble about his year abroad, her scholarship exams, their mutual financial woes. When they come back, Richie's head whips to them, like a hawk's. "Macking on Ben's girl now?" he cackles, "Jesus, Stan, no!", and Stan palms his face, laughing unwillingly, convulsively when Richie licks him, and the day is good to him and he's never seen Bill smile for such an extended period of time.

The day is in fact so unbelievably decent that Stan sort of forgets to expect things to go wrong for a while, and subsequently gets fucked over in that moment, because only at half past two does Stan realise that it's a Saturday— it's a _Saturday_ , and, because it can, Bev and Ben's visit ends up coinciding with Patrick and Henry's.

Patrick Hockstetter, Stan muses, appears to have developed since highschool the ineffable need to over-utilise his strange spidery build, and thus seems to be committed to taking up as much space as possible. He enters first with a reckless kick to the door, jolting them all apart with its unpleasant chime, and whereas he doesn't quite seem to notice or care for Bev, as committed as he is to inserting himself into Neibolt as forcibly as possible, Henry _does_ , and it turns out— Bev and Bill may have history, but so do Bev and _Henry_. There's absolutely no need for him to pass their table by the window as he makes his way to his, but he does anyways, overpowering the space with the cloying smell of Juicy Fruit, and in an instant there's a big, vicious scowl on his face Stan hasn't had to face since senior year, and a hand ghosting a half-inch over Bev's shoulder and he's getting _way too damn close—_

Stan doesn't hear what he says, none of them do, but his mouth opens into a rigid grimace and through the cacophony blasting out of the phone in his pocket and the hard, furious despair creased into Bev's face Stan hears something bitter and vengeful and ending in "— _unt_."

A lot of things happen very quickly from there. Henry gets one hand firm on Bev's shoulder with a jarring slap, leaving a red red mark; Mike balls his hands into fists; Patrick cracks his neck, blinking curiously; Bill gets to his feet, pushing his chair behind him with a complicated-looking motion that involves hooking his ankle around one of its legs.

Unsure of what to do, Stan, Richie, and Ben hover around each other, gone from slack to rigid in less than a second. (He figures it must be worst for Ben, who's bigger, stronger, now, but still not so much as Henry.) (Hell, it's like they're playing out a damn blockbuster: Bill's hard expression, quivering slightly, would not look at all out-of-place out of one of Richie's — _"ironic!"_ —  Die Hard features.)

Henry's fingers dig, trembling, into Bev, leaving a sore-looking mark. " _Lookit_ me—" he hisses in a spittle-filled rush, and Bev kicks him.

In the shin, the knee, the balls. Stan's not close enough to see, but the end result is the same: Henry stumbles and Patrick jerks into action, mouth twisted balefully, and Bev kicks him again. Oh, _hell_ — it's a good day for Neibolt to be virtually empty, because Henry Bowers goes down like a stone, falling flat onto a table Richie'd neglected to clear and neither of them'd anticipated to be attacked so early in the day. Bill and Ben draw forward, quietly angry, the former quaking all over, as Stan and Mike draw back, and judging by the looks on Patrick's and Richie's faces they're both about five seconds from going at each other with the cutlery, but then— then there's Vic coming out of nowhere, wiping his hands on his apron, the peaked look of the long-suffering and truly, miserably, exhausted pinching tight his indecipherable expression. In less than a second he's got two hands in Henry's collar, dragging him off the table, off Bev. Cutlery clatters hard against the ground.

Henry rights himself all too quickly, sliding off the table to his feet in a smooth motion powerful enough to pitch him slightly forward. "Don't touch me, Vic. Do _not._ " Stan's never felt particularly close to Vic but he's one of the more tolerable out of Neibolt's extended group of part-time staff, and definitely the most out of Henry's group of old chums from highschool, and, well— in general, Stan doesn't like to see people _die._  Especially in Neibolt, where the task of cleaning up the aftermath will fall on him.

Unfortunately, the probability of just that happening is becoming rapidly more likely: Henry's about half a head taller than Vic and a lot bigger, probably from all the time he spent kicking the shit out of Stan's grade, and he's using that now to his advantage in looming over Vic. "Get your fucking hands off." All in an unsure, tumbling rush.

Despite this, Vic's standing tall. "Calm down, Hank," he drawls. "Deep breaths." Somehow, Stan finds himself near Bill; finds his hand slipped into his. Henry twitches and Vic does something similar: gets a hand on his shoulder, rubbing gently. "C'mon, like we learnt. Out through your mouth, _c'mon_."

Bev picks up a plate. Stan thinks,  _oh, god, no. Not today._

"Did you eat today?" Vic's asking. Henry looks like it'll _actually_ kill him to answer, and Vic expels a shuddering breath. "Christ, Henry, when was your last meal?" His voice drops. "Did you, did you take your— Henry, you're not fucking supposed to take them on an empty stomach, _fuck_. Henry, _did you—"_

Henry frowns, doesn't answer. Neibolt's meagre scattering of patrons quiets, starts to notice the scene unfolding around them. Mike folds his hand around Bev's wrist, coaxing her grip loose around the plate, and she takes Ben's hand in turn.

"Henry," pleads Vic, plaintive. Stan has no idea what the fuck is going on, but then Patrick's sliding forward and Richie comes alive with a fork in his hand, bellowing as he slips over the floor and his undone laces.

 _"I think the fuck not_ , Hockstetter!"

In the end, it's not Vic who comes so terrifyingly close to death but Richie. Of course, it's Stan who sees Richie's entire life flash before his eyes —holding Stan on the way to the Admissions Office, eating day-old soggy pizza off the plates Stan'd bought them in their dorm— when he shoves Patrick, and when Patrick near throws him into Owen Phillips' table in turn. Henry's torn out of his odd stupor as both he and Vic make a wild grab for Patrick, and Stan reaches for Richie, pulling him back to safely.

Richie's none-too-happy about it. _Of course he is._ "I could've taken him," he insists, "I _could've_." Bill rolls his eyes and Ben coughs out a laugh, the sound warm, dispelling the tension.

Mike takes a hesitant step to Vic, to Patrick, who is  _miraculously_  looking more penitent than menacing. His shoes crunch on broken glass, flipping the scattered cutlery. "I think they should go—" Mike's got something to his timbre that's quiet, tender, but powerful. Stan remembers what he'd told them about Henry, ( _imagine having to live next to Bowers, Stan; imagine that for a moment)_ and realises he sort of wants to watch Mike duke it out with Henry, just to see the fallout of his modest, indomitable presence versus Henry's sharpened excess of _fury_.

But only sort of. He and Mike are _friends_ , and it's a _very_ Richie thought to think.

Vic waves them all off. "I've got it." He shoots Stan a piercing look and Stan gets it and wipes his hands on his apron, gesturing for all of them to sit down, calm down. Richie makes for a broom and Bill and Ben settle easy, but Bev stays rigid for a long while yet, unwinding only when Stan bums her a cigarette out of the pack, somehow simultaneously wrinkled and unopened, in his pocket. Henry seems more or less placated, half-obscured from their line of sight due to Vic's presence, but they're free to glare at Patrick, who, for the most part, seems uncomfortable, but only barely concerned by the damage he's caused.

"I h-hate that guy," Bill admits around a spoonful. "He br-broke E-Eddie's arm in m-middle school."

Stan asks, "Which arm?" 

"Yeah," chimes in Richie, "surely not the one Stan was planning on breaking."

Bill looks between the both of them. Stan squeezes his hand, and he smiles, tries again. "I t-tutor his br-brother, y'know—

Mike passes them with an armful of — _intact_ — glasses. "Avery, right? He's a sweet kid."

"Can't be that sweet— he's a Hockstetter, right?"

"Jeez, R-Richie, shut it."

"Shutting it, shutting it. Fuck that guy, though. Him and his six-hundred-dollar Docs. Bet he's a trust-fund baby. Either that or he's a meth dealer. 's good Eddie's not here, right? Could you imagine Patrick—"

Stan interrupts him with a heavy look, slow and wary. It's meant to be a warning. Richie groans out a peevish "he's already _here_ , Stan, stop acting like I'll fucking summon him," but complies, leaving Bill, Bev, and Ben to fall back into conversation, and Stan to peruse Vic in relative silence.

"You can't keep pulling this shit," Vic's insisting to a dead-looking Henry. "You _can't_ , Hank, no one'll fucking take you if you keep— _if you keep fucking starting shit—"_

"Fuck 'em," grumbles Henry, and Vic turns on Patrick.

"When's the last time you two ate, I swear to fuck—"

They bicker pointlessly, seemingly without end. Restraining order, Stan hears. _Youcan'tdothis-you can'tdothis-youhaveacourtdate-you-can't-do-this._

Mike asks, "You think he needs any help?"

In the end, he doesn't, and Henry's somehow manhandled into settling for kicking the broken glass out of sight for Richie to deal with. They don't interact again save for a few glares and snickers tossed Stan's way, mostly from Patrick, but the latter hits his head hard on a lamp on the way out, which makes it well on the way to worth it. Richie swaggers past, hoisting a broom as a microphone and singing tunelessly along to whatever trapstep-deep house bullshit Henry had blasting out of his phone. He stops his crooning to give Patrick a parting salute that goes unnoticed.

"Man, that was fuckin' weird. _Weirdsville_." Stan doesn't disagree. "Anyways, gang's all here, now. Are we out? Who's up for game night?"

Despite it all, Bev, apparently; she's the first out the door with Richie and Ben wrapped around her, Bill and Stan dragged along helplessly by her surging current.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Ben obliterates them at Jenga; Mike, at Scrabble. Eddie, who'd been absent prior due to "acute pain in my arm! My arm! That you broke, you _motherfucker!"_ (to which Richie cackles out a joyous "Yeah, that's me. _Motherfucker_. Fucking your mom!") turns out to excel at any game that requires a wealth of miscellaneous information or a good memory, his penchant for rattling off disease-related trivia like the damn evening news finally paying off. Bev, Mike, Bill and Peter play a surprisingly good Cards Against Humanity match against Stan's team of himself, Richie, Ben and Eddie. Peter explodes in a paroxysm of joy when his team's deemed the winners, hugging Mike so tight Stan swears he hears bones pop.

They swap teams halfway through, Stan trading out Richie for Mike; Bev, Peter for Ben. Movies and music are put on— shockingly, there's not a single objection to Georgie's rowdy eighties playlist. Mike takes out a cheeseboard that Richie kisses his cheek silly for; Peter, a bottle of what Stan is told is classified Bordeaux. No one loses their shit when Bev knocks her wine over into the carpet, but Stan bites his tongue a little, and moves his leg as to avoid looking at it.

In the midst of it all, there are the following constants: Bev and Ben and Bill clinking their glasses each time they drink, sharing secretive, merry grins; Richie's attempts at an offbeat, cat-wail singing voice that only cede when Stan begins to sing too _("_ lookit Stanley Uris _sayng!")_ ; Eddie's high, shrill interruptions of half-everything that comes out of Richie's mouth; Mike and Peter's whispered, snarky roommate-inside jokes over the rims of their glasses; Peter's attempts to cheat and cheat relentlessly his way through everything they play. ("Oh, c'mon, that's not fair—" "Looking at Eddie's cards, _dipshit_ , was that fair?" "Shut your face, Tozier.") Over the course of the night, their teams become more constant, making neat twosomes: Bev drifts to Ben, Richie to Eddie, Mike to Peter, and Stan to Bill.

By the time Richie gets out the Monopoly board, Stan has a loose arm around Bill's shoulders and a small but unrelenting smile on his flushed face, comfortably tipsy, comfortable with their proximity. "Richie, no," whispers Mike, who's sort of halfheartedly trying to wrestle Peter's pinot noir out of his floppy grip.  

"Richie, _yes!"_ cheer the rest of them, and the deathmatch begins.

Even buzzed, there's no question that Stan's the undisputed Monopoly master. Richie and Eddie are near bankrupted in the first half hour and Bev and Ben fall soon after despite putting up a valiant fight, and in less than an hour its Stan and Bill and their little thimble versus Mike and Peter's skateboard, the others trailing miserably behind. "Aw, jesus," moans Richie when Stan locks in a property and effectively seals a good three-quarters of the board, "I can't watch this. It's a fucking massacre."

"Everyone loves an underdog, right?" Mike looks at Stan, and after three quiet counts they both dissolve into laughter, Bill glancing over the both at them with that same rapt look he'd regarded Stan with those first few times at Neibolt.

Richie and Bev leave the floor for beers that they knife open with Peter's steak set; (Eddie: "You do _not_ look as cool as you think you look right now," Richie: "Do I look cooler?") meanwhile, Ben falls asleep, his head in Bev's lap, as Stan and Bill's stack of paper money grows toward the ceiling. "Your move," Stan tells Mike, who's somehow migrated into the tangle of Peter's legs. It's meant to be a dare.

(Stan doesn't think he's ever wanted to win something so badly in his entire life. It's probably the wine.)

Bill offers him a great, jaunty smile that only spreads and spreads and spreads when Mike's down to his last hundred dollars, when Stan clears the last free property space on the board. Stan thumbs his thimble, clears his throat. "We win." The enunciation is slow, jumbled, overflowing with pleasure. "That's a win, Mike, I win. _We_ win."

His heart begins to climb up his throat— for a first time in a while, he's nothing of an adult, all boy. His fingers fist into the carpet, the veins on the back standing up with excitement, buzzy and tight with excitement.   _We win, we win, we win_. That tipsy, joyful feeling grows in his head, taking the breath out of his lungs. _Quickly-quickly-quickly._ He gasps out stuttered, disbelieving laughter, and then Richie's looking over, whistling out a slurred "well, dip me in butter and roll me in nuts, Stan," and Mike's dragging his hands down his face, laughing through the cracks in his fingers; Peter's flipping the board and Bill's hooking an arm hard 'round his shoulder and he's pulled into his warm chest, noisy and happy and uninhibited.

"We won." It comes out a gasp, jittery, muffled against Bill's affectionate grin when he surges forward and presses his mouth over Bill's. He's ecstatic and finally grown out of adulthood, wild and graceless and sliding off the corner where Bill's lips meet his cheek as the latter laughs freely, his slow blinks fluttering his eyelashes against Stan.

"I g-guess," he agrees, then bites at his lip, half a provocation. "M-more like y-you won." Stan makes a strangled noise of protest — _"we, Bill, we,"_ — to which Bill scoops him neat into his lap, all solid around the pointy bits of him, and kisses him hard— with _teeth_. Stan laughs a vibrant, air-filled laugh and collapses into it. He forgets to shut his eyes and gets eyefuls of freckles, freckles and slight sunburn, with each blink as the wide open seam of his mouth drags against Bill's face, peppering him with bruising kisses.

He insists, _"we"_ with laughter when Bill reciprocates, voice muffled by the occasional click of teeth. At some point Peter gets up to replace his empty bottle of pinot noir, mumbling, "Aw, I can't take this shit," under his breath. Richie nods absently from his place atop the couch, an absurdly gangly little spoon to a comatose Eddie.

"Anyone wanna play the floor is lava?"

Mike laughs, pushes away the neck of the new bottle Peter offers him. "We have work tomorrow."

"Fuck that." Richie throws him a beer that he only just catches. "C'mon, Stan. Not on the floor. Have some class, c'mon— it's _lava_."

Curled tight into Bill, Stan tips his head back at the ceiling and laughs _we_ and _we_ and _we_ and _we won._

* * *

[ **trashmouth** added **yagirlbev** to _cool guy club_ ]

[ **trashmouth** added **benhanscom** to _cool guy club_ ]

[ **trashmouth** set yagirlbev's nickname to _beaverley_ ]

[ **trashmouth** set benhanscom's nickname to _haystacc_ ]

 _trashmouth:_ can we add bbbill 2 the chat now  
_haystacc_ : ask stan 1st

 _trashmouth_ : guys  
_haystacc_ : its litrally 4 in the morningg  
_haystacc_ : pls i need sleep

 _beaverley_ : can some1 dm mike and get him 2 shut richie up  
_trashmouth_ : mikes getting some  
_haystacc_ : hes sleeping

 _beaverley_ : wheres stan wen u need him  
_trashmouth_ : getting some  
_haystacc_ : ill dm eddie  
_trashmouth_ : omg no hes sleeping like right hhhere  
_trashmouth_ : hes rly cute dont ruin it

 _beaverley_ : im gonna kill u mself

 _trashmouth_ : ben motherfucker  
_trashmouth_ : dont u dare

 _trashmouth_ : FINE IMM GOING 2 BBED  
_beaverley_ : we ly eddie  
_eddie swaghetti:_ ily2

* * *

"Man, you guys're so fucking cute." Richie's got a real good singing voice when he wants to impress, (Stan's caught him serenading Eddie a couple times out their room door left ajar) and a real horrible, aggravating falsetto when he wants to annoy. Now, he's got a Marcia-esque caw that Stan isn't hungover enough to truly appreciate, but shies from nonetheless, batting him away with an open hand.  He gets a good three feet of space between them that Richie closes immediately with two big steps: there's not a lot of room for manoeuvring in the backroom and Richie is nothing if not persistent.

Especially untempered— Peter'd been convinced to let Ben and Bev stay so they could reserve their funds for getting away from Stan and Richie, making the most of their week before their return to Cambridge, Bill and Eddie hadn't reached Neibolt yet, and Mike'd called in sick to nurse his hangover. (He really hadn't been a drinker. Stan feels pretty bad about it. Richie evidently doesn't— he'd started planning their next game night the moment he'd woken up.) They'd left him with leftover soup and cheese, atop Peter's legs, to discuss whatever the intersection of Mike's classes in archaeology and European history and Peter's of Classical entailed.

Stan knows that Mike deserves the break, probably more than all of them combined, but save for him and maybe Eddie, there's not a single person in the entire damn world capable of holding Richie back from latching onto Stan. He turns away with a hard roll of his eyes, re-knotting his apron. "We are," he agrees. "You can stop talking about it any day now."

Out of Richie's beaming mouth comes a delighted cackle. "I think the fuck not. Can you believe you looked like you were like, fucking eighty, through all of highschool, but your balls're dropping like, right now?"

"You are— so stupid."

"Stupid? Shit, that's all you got for me? _Stan_." Richie cocks his head to the side, then rests a tender hand on Stan's shoulder. He has to reach up. Stan has a little snicker at that. "Fuck, I'm happy, Stan. Lemme have that." His hand curls into a gentle fist that Stan allows to knock him back a few paces, up against the backroom door. "Nah, let yourself have that."

Stan does. He wants to be happy; hell, he needs to be happy. Richie'd known it, and now he knows it, and— he's close, he can feel it, warm on his cheeks. He scrunches up his nose. "I have that look on my face, don't I?"

He lets Richie swipe his palm across his face and tug at his cheeks, then pushes him away when his touch becomes a hard pinch. "That stupid sappy one? That _morning after_ one?"

"Beep beep—"

"Y'know, technically this is a morning after— like, you guys were in the same room. I'm just saying, Big Bill's pretty tall. You know what they say, you could've climbed him like—"

"—Richie."

Bill and Eddie come half an hour through their shift, the latter visibly exhausted. Richie jumps him when he's barely got a foot through the door, twining tight around him with a shrill _"Eds!"_  He's got a spectacularly rumpled shirt, a Sharpie dick inked across his cast. He passes Stan with a pained look. "I think I got a hernia playing Twister last night."

Stan— does not remember playing Twister, but apparently it happened. Richie spins Eddie around, prodding him hard in the abdomen on the way to his table. The light filtered in through its window is cold and white and illuminates the loving, tender look on Richie's face, his pinkish cheeks. _Who's sappy now, Richie?_ "Nah, these? These are abs, Eds. Bill, come feel these. Tell me these aren't abs."

Eddie scoffs but Bill clears his throat, spluttering out a laugh with a crack through it. "I-I r-really don't think th-those are a-abs." His hand comes, gentle as a feather, to rest against the small of Stan's back. "I w-want to— d-d'you mind?"

Stan looks over his shoulder with a small, pleased smile that Bill returns with obvious familiarity. "Sure. Richie. Tell Vic if—"

"Yeah, yeah. Go get some, you squirrel, you." He makes climbing motions through the air as Stan shepherds Bill around to the backroom, pulling Eddie along his gait like some kind of puppet. The weather's taken a turn for the cooler and is thus verging on tolerable, (that is, due entirely to the temperature— the gradual domination of Neibolt's seasonal menu by pumpkin, apples, kraut, and yams come fall never fails to make him feel a little melancholy) so it's not as stuffy as it should be, especially with Bill, whose understanding of personal space knocks Richie's out of the park. Stan leans the door shut with his elbows, comforted by the brush of Bill's fingers against his neck when he absentmindedly reaches over to adjust Stan's wrinkled collar.

"I-I w-was thinking." He cuts himself off with a frown that's pretty adorable in the comfortable dim. "Y-you still w-want to go out, right?"

Stan bites his tongue. "Well. Yeah. Of course." _…Does Bill?_ They aren't going out, not per se, but did he come back to Neibolt for some kind of final farewell? Was Drunk Stan too much for him?

Evidently not, because Bill's face lights up. "I was thinking," he starts, painfully slow, but— without a single stutter. "I was thinking we could catch a c-concert in th-the winter. Your pick," he adds, a little hasty. "Or, the beach, it's not thuh-that c-cold, but I— I don't think you're a beach guy, somehow." (He isn't wrong.) His smile turns playful, tongue at the inside of his cheek. "Or— _birding_ ," and it comes out in a surge of self-confidence, punctuated by the curl of his fingers at Stan's collar. "I, I got a new camera. We could go to Monhegan Island, mmmake it a day."

Stan pretends to consider it. "Would you draw?" Now he really sounds like a sap. (He's still got Bill's sketchbook, the massive one, at home, tucked under his bed lest Peter dig it out during a bit of inopportune cleaning. It'd become something of a stand-in for Bill on the days when their journeys to Neibolt didn't quite line up, the messy pages of self-portraits near its back fond and inviting under Stan's fingertips.) This seems to take a little bit out of air out of Bill, but in a good way, because he cocks his head to the side, markedly smug.

"If you want me to. 'c-course."

"Then it's a date, Bill." He has to stand on his toes a bit to kiss Bill, a timid peck on the cheek. He doesn't quite remember what it'd been like to kiss Bill for real, but it must've been nice, because Bill's cheeks go bright with a splotchy, hard, red. He returns it, pressing his mouth to each of Stan's eyelids in turn.

"I'll p-pick you up," Stan snickers despite himself. "'n' y-you— you can show me _thhhings_."

"I can show you things." He cups Bill's jaw with his hands, prompting him and ignoring the slight twinge of pain in his neck from having to crane it so far for so long. "Like how to bike?" He can't help the laugh that tumbles out his throat when Bill gapes. "It's a fine ride, but—"

" _But?_ S-Silver's been n-nothing but g-good to me." And his bike has a name, _he named his bike_ , and Stan is _so_ gone for him. "B-b-b- _but?_ B-but wh-what?" Stan shakes helplessly, ignoring the hard prod of the doorknob into his back. "Y-you can show me— _fffffinches_. Blackbirds. A-are you laughing? … _Tits_. Cr-crows—"

He stops, at an obvious loss. "Egrets," Stan supplies, and Bill swoops in and giggles against his cheekbone.

"Y-yeah. Egrets. O-oriental storks."

"Sure, Bill. Oriental storks on Monhegan. China, Bill." he pauses. "I can show you Oriental storks in China. And I think Japan?"

Bill hums, the sound vibrating soft against him. "Thuh-that sounds nice."

"Sounds?" He's aiming for incredulity, the effect of which is severely inhibited by the smile now virtually a permanent fixture to his face. "Only sounds? What's supposed to pass as nice for you? What do you consider nice?" He doesn't dwell on how he may have accidentally invited Bill to his and Richie's trip— it couldn't be helped, honestly. His wardrobe may consist solely of excruciating, superheated sweatshirts and flannel, but there's something about Bill that induces within Stan a permanent giddiness.

Although— whereas there's doubtlessly a sort of compelling charisma to him, this could also be down to the fact that Stan is very, very into him.

"I'd _lllllove_ it," Bill assures him, and, _oop_ , he should probably dwell on it a little more, because he looks like Stan like he's in love, and Stan's got an inkling he's looking back the same. Affection builds and builds in his chest, rocketing through all of him but igniting where his hands meet Bill's face. Bill curls a hand into Stan's hair, combing neat the stiff curls around his kippah, and adds, sombrely,  "I did a p-paper on Laozi, once," and— and just like that, Stan erupts, toppled with a hard, giggly snort out his nose.

He's got to stop confining his conversations with Bill to the backroom, he really has, to dissuade Richie if for anything. "Lookit Stan the man," he crows. "That's a real walk of shame, that is." His voice drops into an approximation of Vic's that makes Eddie do a full-body wince, and Stan lets elicit from him a sigh. "You're fucking cleaning that up, y'hear me? _I'm not cleaning up y'spunk_ —"

He's cut off by one of Eddie's elbows, hard into his chest. Stan disconnects himself from Bill carefully, letting him wander over to Eddie with a curt nod and a smile. Richie ambles over soon after with their discarded menu, taking his place at the defunct coffee machine. "Chickpeas?" Stan guesses, and Richie nods glumly.

"It's like he's scared I'll fucking poison him."

Stan wouldn't put it past him. He used to sleep over at Richie's place a hell of a lot— he knows first-hand how Richie's taste can be, simply put, the absolute worst. With Stan hovering over the cookie jar, Richie has no choice but to go over to take Bill's order when he's ready, reporting back celeriac gratin, hake cheek, pumpkin vatrushka. Stan's taught him well; they share a look lost over Belch Huggins' bulk as he drags himself into Neibolt, crowding Stan and Richie into their little corner. Funny, he hadn't heard the Trans Am pull in— when he looks out the window, there's a Mazda parked outside Neibolt in its place.

"Hey, Reggie." Belch turns to Richie in a slow, painful way that suggests a lot of self-control, and Stan ghosts a hand over his collar, prepares to yank him back. "Where's Amy? I miss her."

Belch must not be functioning at his best because he doesn't give either of them a second glance, only grinding out a distracted "Repairs," before taking the table at the centre. That in itself is weird— Stan knows from routine that Belch and Moose, though certainly not regulars of Neibolt, take the kitchen tables whenever they can. Routine's no longer the oppressive force it'd used to be _(move on, Stan, don't think about that here)_ in his life, but, still.

Still.

Moose trails in after Belch. Stan doesn't believe in luck, not really, but not in coincidences either. Vic's hands grip the plates Stan takes from him a little too tightly, lingering until he yanks away, and he doesn't respond to the perplexed looks Stan shoots him. Stan's unsettled, the feeling only growing all the way to Bill and Eddie's table as he sets down their food, and he almost power-slides Eddie's hot chocolate off the table when Henry comes in through the door.

"Oh," Eddie. "— _fuck_."

It's not a Saturday. _It's not a fucking Saturday_ — he'd been here _yesterday_. Outside, Patrick appears at his shoulder, but doesn't follow him in. Stan doesn't mean to gape, he _doesn't_ , but Henry flinches nonetheless when they meet eyes. Stan hurriedly averts his gaze because his daily allocated quota for uncomfortable human interaction is quickly filling up, and he can't afford for Henry to consume it entirely, he _can't_ , but Richie sure as hell can, because he's clambering over the counter the moment Vic sits Henry down.

Stan— unwillingly follows him as he crowds Vic into the corridor leading on from the backroom. They must look like the two shittiest enforcers in the world, a pair of B-rate horror movie twins. Bill gives him a questioning wave as they vanish into the dark, Richie pinning Vic into the bathroom door, and Stan mouths _it's okay, it's fine at him_ in response. Realistically, he should've gone for _not yet, not yet. Call the police if we don't come out in half an hour._

"What the hell is this?" Richie's demanding. Vic has a cigarette in his hand, like he'd been planning to go on a break anyways. Stan has an— an unpleasant inkling he, he and Belch, had _planned_ this.

"He's just here for lunch, Tozier. Don't wet yourself."

"Criss! He doesn't come on Sundays. You know he doesn't fucking come on Sundays. Why're they— why're they all here? Like, is this some kinda new monthly circle-jerk for all you guys, whacking it off here? You can't take it somewhere we don't have to fucking clean it up?"

Vic points out, "Peter's not here."

"Yeah, because he's at home bonding with Mike about how they don't eat meat or something." Vic frowns, opens his mouth. Richie persists. "What the fuck, Victor? Why is he here? And why's he look—" Richie darts Stan a glance he fails to decipher, swallowing hard. "—why's he look like that?" One of Vic's eyebrows climbs up his forehead but Richie ploughs on, making to snatch Vic's cigarette out of his hand before thinking better of it. "All, all _doped-up_. Why the fuck does he—"

Stan takes the liberty of glancing back and sees that Richie's— Richie's kind of right. Henry's sitting still between Belch and Moose who dwarf him entirely, —security, Stan realises; they'd come as security— gently rolling a glass bottle of lemonade between his palms with an odd, contemplative expression. _Not_ doped-up, no, but blunt, maybe even _soft_ , no longer jittering with the ugly rage Stan'd come to recognise him by. He looks nervous, a little pained, and Stan understands. He rests a hand on Richie's shoulder, pulling him a little way away, to no avail— Vic _explodes_ on them anyways.

"Because he fucking is, asshole." His voice is harsh and tight and unwilling through his hard, creased face. Richie balks and Vic studies Stan's shrewd face for a second, clearly regretting his decision, before continuing. "He's been at therapy for five months now. He's starting class again next year, but he needs to fucking pay his way through it, and we aren't gonna let him fucking truck around forever, no way." The _we_ obviously means he and Belch and Moose, _Patrick_ , —hell, maybe even _Peter_ and Gard, _all_ his old buddies— but Stan can't shake the feeling it encompasses _them_ , as in he and _Richie_ , too. As if Neibolt and everyone in it'll be complicit if they don't comply to what Vic's getting at. "Fucking— _half-scholarship._ They couldn't give him the whole thing, right?" He's unravelling in a tired rush, flecking his lip with spittle. " _No fucking way,_ not for Hank." A small, bitter laugh. (All the snippets Stan'd gleaned from his conversations with Belch that time he'd taken Bill to the bakery start to come together.) "And we're hiring. He needs it, Tozier— _fuck_  you, he needs it. Else he'll have to go back to working for his dad. You really think that _motherfucker_ would let him go to class." A challenge, not a question. Richie, to his credit, doesn't back down.

"Yeah, it'd be just fucking dandy." He puffs hard, trying to dislodge a stray curl of hair tangled into the frames of his glasses. Stan helps him out. Vic regards them both with a look thats a little fond and mostly exhausted. "Okay, fine, fine. _Fuck_ his dad. But I don't give a shit if Hank the tank has a prescription, if he has a fucking _soul_ , suddenly— that shit with Bev, that happened yesterday, man, _yesterday_ —"

"He's gonna fucking apologise," spits Vic. (And that, _that is just weird_. Stan isn't complaining, but it's weird.) "Cut him some slack, Tozier," Something about the way he says it rings of a plea. Stan's feet draw forward of their own accord, and somehow he's got a hand on Richie's shoulder and a hand on Vic's, playing mediator between them. He's aware that this is most likely a bad idea, that this, like having to work with Henry fucking Bowers, is going to have consequences, but Vic doesn't seem to mind the sudden —uncharacteristic— contact, and Richie goes a little slack underneath his fingers. "He's got a court date," Vic rakes his palms through his hair, skimming over them with a weathered look. "He's getting a _restraining order_ against the old prick, so fuck off. Leave it alone."

Richie splutters, indignant. Stan clears his throat. "We work here too," he reminds Vic.

"Yeah, no shit. It'll be fine, Uris." He says it like he doesn't just want but needs to believe it. Stan looks over his shoulder at the play of the lukewarm afternoon light over Henry's shrunken-in shoulders, and understands. He doesn't want to, but he understands.

He _needs_ to.

Eventually, Richie settles for loping off to Eddie, and Vic for smoothing over Henry's situation with Henry himself. Before Stan can leave, Vic reaches into his apron, presses Stan's little tropical bird book into his palm. "Found it underneath the bread case," he grunts. He shrugs off Stan's hand, still on his shoulder, but gently. It's the closest he'll ever get to a _thank you_ for the consolation, or at least the lack of vocal objection. Stan takes it. Things between he and Vic have been worse.

Hell, things between he and _Henry_ have been worse.

Bill nods at the bird book as Stan makes his way back, and Stan lets him take it off him in exchange for his unfinished vatrushka. (Flanked by Moose and with his hand white-knuckled in Belch's, Vic, presiding over Henry, doesn't seem to mind.) Bill is, as always, enthusiastically charmed by Stan's messy notes in the margins, more so by Stan's commitment to sucking his utensils clean. Watching him thumb, half-reverent, Stan's pinned-in Polaroids of toucans his father'd taken him to see at the zoo, he's pretty sure he wouldn't mind seeing the world over with Bill. Beijing babblers, kites and buzzards, little bluethroats, avocets.

Really, it'd be a logistical nightmare— Richie's inability to read time schedules versus Bill's clutter of sketchbooks and pencils and flannel, exploding out of his luggage; Eddie (and when Stan thinks about it, Eddie would come, Richie'd make him even if he had to stuff him in a suitcase) constantly having to declare and sort pills, most likely saving all their asses; Bev and Ben (because Richie'd go ballistic a year without Bev) thrown in just to stir the pot. They'd bring Mike, too; they'd probably die without him, it'd be _wrong_ without him. It'd be a nightmare of tickets and seats —Stan can already see Richie and Eddie bitching over who got the aisle— and everything, but he'd get to lean his head on Bill's shoulder on long train rides and take pictures of them in front of landmarks to send back to Georgie. He'd be there to get lost with Stan in fantastic places and that alone would make it all worth it, even if it's just wishful thinking, even if—

Richie brings his train of thought to a screeching halt with one of his own. He's cradling a muffin he must have snuck while Stan was waxing poetic on Bill waxing poetic on his book, one hand fanned, grasping lazily Eddie's broken arm. "This is gonna be such a shit idea," Stan hears, "I swear. This is gonna be fucking _terrible_."

Eddie sneaks an appraising look at Henry, now being led around to the kitchen by a more hopeful-looking Vic, over his hot chocolate. He decides: "People change." Stan wishes he could ease out the uncertainty, the discomfort, in his voice, but Bill's got him: he slings an arm around Eddie, petting his shoulder.

Richie at least tries to sound penitent. "Yeah, sure. I guess. People change. I don't even think he's changed his fucking shirt— d'you think he has multiple of the same one, or does he just have one fucking shirt? Either way he's not making a fantastic case, right?"

Stan scrapes his fork over the plate, collecting the remnants of pumpkin cream and crumbs. "They're different shirts, Richie." Just all sleeveless, all in some shade of red. (Okay, they may, in fact, be the same shirt.)

"He still has that stupid fucking haircut—"

"Can we not talk about Bowers?" hisses Eddie, pushing himself up off the table and almost dislodging Bill's hold on him. "Please. It's starting to stress me out."

Richie complies in exchange for the privilege of kissing the chocolate off his top lip. Stan is all too glad to divert his attention to Bill, who returns it with an imploring curl of his mouth. Stan regrettably still tastes like pumpkin so he doesn't kiss him, instead recalling with a shock Bill's unfinished novel, or what he remembers of it. "Did you stick with _clown eats child?"_

From Bill's mouth tumbles an accosted noise. "I took it out, thhhhhanks." He looks charily over his shoulder and Stan is warm despite Neibolt's cooling climate, leaning comfortably back into his seat as Bill glares at a red-nosed mannequin relocated to outside the bathroom door, probably to convince each kid who wandered there to hold it. "I c-couldn't stop thinking a-about it each time I c-came. It w-was _t-too real._ " His nose scrunches, but his smile remains, slight and unpretending.

He's really too cute for anyone's good.

Stan prompts him further and learns that Bill's into his second draft, now; that the clown's been replaced by, ludicrously— a bird. "I've b-been t-talking to M-Mike," _(right)_ (right, because they're all friends now, aren't they?) (Stan knows that this— _this is right.)_ "D-did you know he's scared of b-buh-birds?"

Stan did not. (It explains a lot.)

Bill and Eddie lurk around Neibolt until Richie and Stan're allowed off. They give Vic and his little posse a parting nod that's met with a smile half tired and half grateful, and Bill and Eddie cycle 'round them in wide open circles on the way back to Peter's— back _home_. (His home, Richie's, Eddie's, Mike's. For a week, Ben and Bev's. Maybe— maybe Bill's too, someday.) Stan's the first through the door, out the elevator, and there's a definite spring in his step that Richie doesn't comment on, as tightly wrapped to Eddie as he is. Only Bill bounds after him, pink in the cheeks, rustling close to him as Stan fumbles for his keys. "J-Jesus, s-s- _ssssssspeed_ racer." He braces a hand on Stan's waist and Stan almost forgets about the locked door and breaks his shoulder throwing himself into it.

Inside, Mike is playing at acrobatics atop towering stacks of textbooks; Peter, half-buried in the couch. The former's explanation is this: "We lost a— a ball." He's smiling sort of bashfully, sort of tiredly. Stan knows for a definite fact that none of them save for Peter are really baseball people, but then again, Peter absolutely seems like the sort of person to try and mansplain baseball to his significant other. (His billion-dollar grin almost outshines Mike's when he waves Mike over; on the way to their room, Richie hisses a pointed " _Weird_ ," at them both and Stan can't even disagree anymore.)

So he and Bill help Mike look for his ball until Eddie and Richie emerge from their room and join in. There's customary bickering (Stan passes Eddie on the way to the kitchen and catches an earful of Eddie's shrill, "How can you not cook? _You work in a fucking restaurant!")_ and bitching 'til they find it. Later, they sit cross-legged on the carpet, leaned against Bill. "Just crows," confesses Mike when Stan's reminded of what Bill'd told him. "Crows and big birds. I got attacked by one when I was a kid— like a massive one—"

"And it fucking traumatised him," crows Peter, tossing his ball into the air a little ways and catching it. He has his arm around Mike's shoulders, his fingers scrubbing at his shirtsleeve absentmindedly. Mike doesn't seem to mind, so neither does Stan. Instead, he settles back into Bill, ponders with his thumb at his lip.

"The largest bird I've ever heard of is the Wondering Albatross." He spreads out his arms for emphasis, felling Bill with the motion and rolling his eyes at his exaggerated _oof._ "Twelve-foot wingspan."

Mike tests him. "It was bigger. I swear, Stan." Eyebrows crease, only half-joking. Mike looks certain in his skin, not at all like how he'd been those first few weeks of knowing Stan, appearing at home despite the strangeness of his proximity to Peter. "Fourteen feet, really. Your thing exactly." Stan guesses there's something daring there, but overwhelmed by fondness. (Which is, in itself, pretty flattering. He hasn't forgotten that Mike'd been the one to comb through his books, arrange them by height and photograph them for reference for Eddie's origami birds.)

He hasn't forgotten how he and Richie'd held him. 

So he and Mike volley banter and bird facts at each other 'til Bill pipes up that he's replacing his killer clown with a phoenix-or- _something_ , and 'til Peter fucks off to mind Eddie and Richie in the kitchen. He's quickly replaced by Bev, who ambles in from Stan's room with a quizzical look etched into her face that doesn't quite fade as he and Bill nod at her in greeting. "Does anyone know why I've got a message from Bowers?"

Stan wastes no time in pulling up a cushion and Bev sits in the junction between he and Bill, letting them all fret and fuss over her and the apology they know she's gotten. At some point, Richie emerges from the kitchen, followed by Eddie, and they direct her reply to the bass of Richie's stereo. "Man, just tell him to go fuck himself," proposes Richie. Stan doesn't wholeheartedly disagree with that, but fixes him with a tired look nonetheless, carding his loose hand through his hair as Van Halen melts his bones into the carpet.

"Don't, c'mon." This, from Eddie. "Fuck that, don't peeve him off. Give him a thank you."

Richie crawls forward on his elbows. "A _passive-aggressive thanks_. And a fuck you."

"What the fuck, don't—"

With Bev's phone in his palm and Stan in his arm, Bill splutters out a humoured, "Guh- _god_ R-Richie. G-grow u-up," that they all cheer to with equal parts amusement and contempt. In the end, Stan remembers Vic's haggard, drawn look and curls his hand into the carpet, relenting out of sheer pity for him as even half of a friend. In the end, despite it all, despite his stories of what Henry'd done to him over late-night soup and early-morning coffees, it's Mike that shoos them away from drifting over Bev; Mike that insists they play it down, be _nice_ ; that Bowers must go through enough as it is, or something. It takes a long while for Richie to agree, but he crumbles when Bev looks at him all imploring, trusting, stripped bare.

"Aw, hell," he grinds out. "He'll fucking send Pete after us to kill us in our sleep if we tell him where to stick it anyways, right?"

So, armed with Bill's vocabulary and whatever the hell he'd learned in journalism, they ethos, logos, and pathos their way into a sufficiently compassionate and ominous reply of forgiveness that doesn't make Stan cringe when he reads it, and doesn't immediately demand that Henry march his way over to them, right now, and kick the shit out of them. Bev screws her nose down at it a second before sending it off, damning them with a wry look swept over all of them like they're all personally responsible for any possible fallout, if not all Henry's fuckery entirely. "You know if he pulls anything again I'll just hit him, right?"

Both Stan and Richie glow. _(That's their Bev.)_ Mike laughs a little. "That's fair."

Hit send. Either sign a peace treaty or a death warrant— none of it matters to Stan, eclipsed by Bill and surrounded by his friends. Drinks (juice) are poured by Eddie, takeout's ordered after some nudging of Peter on Mike's part, and Richie puts on some Talking Heads from Georgie's playlist.

Bill ends up leaving before their food comes, but somehow everyone has the decency to let Stan live as he sees him out. Outside, the sky is only half-dim, not quite the morbid bluedark seen in fall and in winter, and Stan can both see and feel the gentle smile that curves at Bill's mouth. He ends up putting his fluttery hands to work straightening Bill's collar for him, straying over his adam's apple and jawline. They don't kiss goodbye because he can see Bev casting bright, smirking glances at them, and Richie making faces, out of the corner of his eye, but ends up telling Bill, "You know you're always welcome here, right? By, you know, all of us." _But mostly me._

Bill takes it, bumps his nose to Stan's. (They're _so_ sappy.) "Yeah. _Though—_  I w-wouldn't m-mind if you could t-t-tell me again."

They hover there adrift 'til Ben comes back and has to squeeze past them to get into the condo, effectively blocking Richie's view— Stan's aware of this through the whine that follows and stretches painfully through the air, making both of them groan and grin and laugh. "I'll sssssee you soon," Bill tells him, his forehead pressed to Stan's, his breath warm on his nose. Stan squirms a little in his shoes and pushes him away gently, sad for the bracing chill that replaces him. (Bill'd like Rio, and Tokyo; Canberra and Bali and Milford Sound— he _would_.) "S-soon, r-right?"

"'course," promises Stan, and lets him go.

He thinks about the dwindling echo of Bill's shout of "Hi-yo, S-Sssssssilver! A _way!"_ for a long while after he leaves, and ends up zoning out over Peter's orders of Chinese. Stan climbs into bed and smiles like a lovesick idiot at the ceiling 'til five minutes before Peter sweeps 'round their rooms hollering " _bedtime, you geriatric fucks!"_ He's not a dreamer, but sees Bill swamped in featherdown and dawnlight when he closes his eyes all the same.

* * *

Bill takes him up on his offer, and though there's not a chance in hell of him moving into Stan's spare bed because has to stay near his parents' _(near Georgie)_ 'til he finds his own feet again, he becomes one of the condo's fixtures anyways, crowding them all against the arms of the living room sofa with Bev on one side and Stan on the other. At the same time, Mike works some kind of magic or Peter realises they're suddenly friends, or something like it, because Richie and Eddie's share of the rent dwindles down to almost nothing. It's when he and Richie are checking their joint balance one movie night during the commercial breaks that Stan learns to breathe again; Peter, with a loose hand on Mike's knee, shoots them a daring grin that Stan returns not as wryly as he'd used to.

He doesn't say it, so Richie does. "I could fucking kiss you, Pete. Was it my winning personality you realised you couldn't live without? Was it the fear of losing me to your shitty Broadway land-lording?"

"I'm pretty sure it was your cheeseboards, Richie," points out Mike, earnestly.

Ben pipes up from Bev's lap with "It was your ugly Hawaiian shirts," which Eddie compounds with a "Nah, it's the subwoofers you put in the fucking bed," and Richie with a lot of unintelligible protest that Bill shuts off with a groaning "Buh- _beep beep, Richie_ ," before Peter can hike up the rent again. With the new year crawling toward them and Neibolt consuming his life, Stan doesn't have a lot of energy to spare, but it's with Bill that he sows herb plants and rainbow silverbeet on the windowsills of Peter's kitchen, and with Bill that he lies on his bed in the evening and pours himself out into Bill's gentle hands over hot chocolate with too much cinnamon, and Mike's leftovers.  

Bev and Ben leave for Cambridge soon enough and whereas Stan's room is left feeling empty without Ben taping sketches that reach up to the ceiling and Bev to kick at the walls from the extra bed, Stan manages to get through on the hug Bev gives him as she climbs into the taxi to the airport. "Be good to him, alright?" Her warm smile bursts with zany affection against his cheek and he's reminded with a shock of what'd drawn her to he and Richie so long ago: her shimmering points bright and earnest with grass-stain, the infectious energy of her.

By contrast, he figures what Bill gives that's got him so smitten is simplicity. Stan hadn't been a dater in highschool but despite never knowing it, he's missed the company. He's missed the quiet security of being able to like someone and be liked, (and he does like Bill, he _does_ , especially in the quiet moments where they sit against Stan's bed on the carpet and page through his sketchbook, hands touching) and he fucking likes being held, and there are growing parts of him falling in love with the security, the _simplicity_ , Bill offers with open hands.

So, Bill never takes his spare bed but he pretty much takes up residence in his heart with his semi-reverent appraisal of Stan's dry humour and untameable hair and meticulously ordered room and that's fine, and Stan could watch him draw for days on end without tiring of it. They make plans for Monhegan Island, (for _later_ , for when Stan's life's quieted down, they decide) for movie dates without subtitles to make up for Richie and Peter's bitching, and Stan spends more time than he should thinking about taking Bill half around the world with him. He soon learns that, apparently, he's not the only one doing so: he's been unwillingly catching snippets of Richie's and Eddie's conversations for ages, but only ends up putting the pieces together one sleepy morning (unfortunately unoccupied by Bill) while brushing his teeth.

They're talking Eddie's mom, Stan's Hanukkah plans, Richie's overbite. "I heard Harvard kids do, like, a fuckton of Addy? D'ya think I can get Bev to, like, hit me up?"

Stan can virtually hear the pained eye-roll in Eddie's groan and approves, really. Eddie Kaspbrak, _literal_  martyr— if for anything, for putting up for all of Richie's— Richieness. "You know you need a fucking prescription—"

"It's legit, you know it is! Also, you're gonna need to stock up. You know, if you can't get your meds while on air. I don't think our timetable's gonna let you hop around looking for benzos, Eds. Do they even fucking have benzos in, like, China?"

Stan's not quite sure what it is that Eddie's spitting at (Eddie's Prozac, if Stan remembers correctly, is _not_ a benzo, they almost _don't_ have a timetable, _"do they even have benzos in China, Eddie?", god)_ when he hawks into the sink, but it's immediately followed with a spluttery, "Richie, _what?"_

 _Richie, what_ , indeed. Typical Tozier, the sensitive soul. Stan puts his nose to his cereal and pretends he isn't eavesdropping when they come out— he doesn't really have to: Richie doesn't so much talk as shout at Eddie as he comes out of the bathroom like a rocket.  "Aw, c'mon, Eds! I'll put you in my suitcase!" Stan lifts his head from his bowl, gives him a questioning look that he returns with a bubbly megawatt grin. _Classic_ Richie.

His life becomes an endless string of _I can'ts_ a few days after —"I can't just leave, Richie, I have—" _(my mom, class, my fucking goldfish, Richie!)_ — but ultimately, the truth is this: neither he nor Eddie can resist that smile, and Stan is largely unsurprised when Eddie ends up asking him for a suitcase.

See, Stan'd fallen for Bill (because, he reflects, that's exactly what's happened: he's _fallen_. Richie does a half-David Attenborough voice in his head, crooning _lookie here; take a gander at the one and only world's smallest adult tripping over his fucking feet! What a babe!)_ like falling down the stairs, sort of. Rough, but an inevitable slide, with an occasional pause here or there for him to reflect or flail before tumbling another few steps.  

By contrast, Eddie and Richie fell for each other like fucking bricks through a windshield.

(There's no protesting Richie, anyways.)

Subsequently there's no real resistance when noisy afternoons spent quibbling over semantics, Eddie showing a pedantic side that rivals even Stan's notorious scrupulosity, ("Man, you ever tried to get anything past Stanley the manley here? It's his Jew side, I swear." "All of me's the Jew side, Richie," "That's your Jew speaking, Stan!") bleeds into stuffy evenings spent poring over their itinerary, tweaking times and responsibilities. Eddie'll have to smooth it over with his _mother_ , with his college— he'll need a job when all he's done is "babysit for kids my mom let me talk to, _holy fuck!"_ , but during idle evenings he lies in Richie's arms, swaddled in his oversized shirts, untouched by it all.

"We'll figure it out," promises Richie with his mouth at the shell of his ear, tangling his hands into Eddie's crown when he thinks Stan isn't watching. (Stan's pretty much always watching, even when he doesn't think of it like that.) "It'll be fine, Eds. We'll figure it out."

Peter throws a cushion at them that Richie only barely manages to deflect with an offended cry. "Not on my fucking couch you won't."

* * *

_We'll figure it out._

Some days Stan texts Bill, leaves for Neibolt early, meets up with him on the way. Some days he brings the sketchbook, some days he doesn't and Bill brings his laptop, letting Stan peak over his shoulder at his latest draft. _We'll figure it out._ Just because Eddie's coming, somehow, and just because Mike could probably get through too with his parents' support and Peter's sudden dotage, doesn't mean he can drag Bill along with them. When Vic's in a good enough mood Stan trades cigarettes for outside time, leading Bill to Neibolt's little lawn, sitting in the grass with him, his head leaned against Bill's broad shoulder.

All these days, he does his very best not to bring it up because Bill has Georgie (and Georgie has his bird book, and a bit of Stan's heart, and all of highschool waiting for him, good lord) and Stan has an influx of new part-time staff to train and they're not exactly sappy enough to warrant the devotion that Richie and Eddie do of each other. Despite this, Bill ends up bumping their knees together as they sit on Neibolt's steps one tepid dusk as Corcoran and a few new waiters deal with the dregs of the evening crowd; ends up placing a hand over Stan's, light as a feather, jerking Stan upright with a jolt of electric warmth.

"I h-haven't b-b-been writing as much." he admits. "G-guess I need ssssome _inspiration_." He laughs heartily, from deep inside of him. _Well_.

Stan casts him a half-sly, cautiously hopeful look, trying to glance over archly. "I have more books, if you want them." He has, in fact, a _wealth_ of bird books. An _excess_ , arranged by height and colour courtesy of Mike and Richie.

Bill's brow creases, playful. "Y-you _know_ what I mmmmean, Stan." His fingers squeeze and Stan's heart judders.

He probably has such sweaty hands.

Cycling away from Neibolt with Bill, Stan shouts out his good mood to be swallowed up by the welcoming dark, the wind in his face when it threatens to rip away his kippah, the back of his hand. He thumbs it hard into Bill's palm as he laces their fingers together walking Georgie home from school. Safe back at the condo —back at home— with Bill a comforting presence at his shoulder as he waters their silverbeet and Mike's thyme and aloe, he can press it into Bill's mouth with his own, melding their smiles together in the gentle light as fall rain comes down hard outside. It's in that spirit that their itinerary is rewritten and revamped and redone. _Simplicity_ , that's what Bill give him. In return, Stan gives what he knows best. Security, order, some good fucking sense and arms to hold him when he's got nothing else.

Realistically, Stan knows that it's going to be a nightmare— god, it's going to be hell for food alone, (he'd started keeping kosher in middle school, what Eddie's willing to eat fits into his palm, Mike doesn't eat meat, Richie's incapable of consuming anything that won't kill him in the long run, Bill probably has fucking allergies, Ben is six feet of high-protein no- _bullshit_ ) but when Bill lays his head in his lap as he figures housing and tickets and visas, _(oh god, Richie, we forgot visas)_ Stan doesn't mind. They'll figure it out.

They'll figure it out even if it kills him.

And it's the little things that make it a little better, bit by bit. Stan pretends to miss the proud affectionate way Eddie looks at them when he and Bill are sitting together half the time, but returns the rest when Eddie ends up in Richie's lap in front of the TV on takeout nights, Bill prodding them in the sides with a foot and a sly, quirked mouth. Stan's and Mike's day off ends up coinciding, and Mike teaches him how to cook in the chafing cold of the early morning, laughing merrily at the flour puffed over Stan's precise hands and mouth.

"Oh, I think I can taste some," he groans, and Mike grins at him all the way as he scrubs it out of his eyebrows with a dish towel. In the end, when there's stew in their pot and only clean-up for Stan to concern himself with (something he is fairly familiar with, living with Richie), he comes at Stan with a friendly open palm clapped over his shoulder.

"I'm proud of you, Stan," he tells him. It seems to be a common theme: it's what Ben tells him on call in between classes, what Bev whispers to him over the phone in the dead of night, giggly-shrill but sincere, what Richie mouths into his back when he comes up behind Stan to pinch and hold him. _I'm proud of you. You're happy now, right? You've come so far, Stan. You're letting yourself be happy, Stan. Thank fuck, it's been, like, a thousand fucking years, let's go do karaoke and get smashed, Stan, do you even know how much I missed you singing?_

—Okay, the final mostly comes from Richie, and Stan does his level best not to deign him with a response, (even the eye-rolls and shoves won't work, anymore because he's had the time to get used to Eddie's rejection, too, and seems to be well on his way to evolving into something _fucking unstoppable)_ but there's no denying that, well, he feels good. He can wake up and look at their mess of a plan and feel— optimistic instead of like he's drowning. In Richie's words, he can put a little more fucking effort into being _nice, goddammit._

With that thought in mind, he forces himself not to startle when he comes home early from grocery shopping with Bill on a balmy weekend and finds Peter in the kitchen, chopping hunks of pumpkin with an oversized knife. Peter has an inexpert hand that suggests he's never really had to work or cook or do anything for his own survival at all, which ends up forcing Stan to intervene when he almost cuts his damn hand off in front of him. "Fucking christ almighty—"

Just because Stan's outlook on life is taking an upper doesn't mean he can meet everything he sees with good cheer. He faces Peter with quite the opposite: stern worry and a hard-lined mouth as he comes up behind him, setting his plastic bags on the floor to pry the knife from him. When his hand brushes Peter's, he jolts like he's been stung, —Stan must be evolving some sort of obscure skill set too, considering the swiftness with which he catches the knife before it's allowed to clatter into the sink— forcibly separating them with a huffy, haughty breath.

His eyes sweep the ground. Stan's follow suit— he's no great pal of Peter's, and Marcia's involvement in vanishing away the rent he would've owed hadn't exactly improved their relationship. Nevertheless, this is their home, now, not just Peter's.

And, well. Mike is _their_ friend. Not just Stan's.

"Mikey's on the night shift." Peter volunteers this information like Stan will actually get up and hold the knife to his throat if he doesn't. "I thought—" ( _It's weird, Mike,_ Stan hears Richie whine in his ear) "—I could do dinner, y'know? Do something for him." And this, like he's genuinely ashamed to be caught doing something nice.

Stan opens his mouth. Closes it. "That's nice." And out of character enough without him making it more uncomfortable than it needs to be.

Peter mimics him, with an added little chuckle that falls short of smug. "I think he's fucking coming down with something, y'know. Think I'll take him to the doctor's or something, or. You know." Peter cuts himself off and because that alone isn't a very Peter thing to do, let alone noticing anything not directly concerning himself, Stan gives himself a moment to peruse him. He's sort of shrunken in his expensive-looking sweater, and, hey, Stan doesn't know— maybe Mike _does_ directly concern him. He hadn't given it the kind of thought Richie had, and he's not sure if he should change that, now, but it doesn't quite matter, because Stan figures he looks just as awkward and shrivelled, unsettled by the space between them.

"Thanks, Peter. Really." And he means it. (If there's one thing Peter can give Mike that literally none of  the rest of them can, it's a fucking car.) His limp hands describe a vague motion in the direction of the chopping board. "Do you need some help?"

They roll up their sleeves and spend the next hour cutting and roasting vegetables between prolonged sips of dessert Cointreau and bitching about Richie's new sound system. By the time Richie and Eddie're home from their date and Stan's getting cutlery, they're both pleasantly loose, Peter more buzzed than he is, both wrecks in their clean-pressed, ill-fitted clothes but surprisingly fine with it.

"Hey guys," greets Eddie, uncertain. Richie wraps around him, long fingers laddering Eddie's bare arms, picking at the seams of his polo.

"Who the fuck are you and what have you done with Stanley and Pete?"

Peter hurls a dish sponge at him with a superb pitching arm. Stan, who isn't as nearly as remarkable a sportsman, rakes his hair out of his eyes, tries for an unamused stare.

"Do you want dinner, or what?"

Richie surrenders in a blink. "Never mind, there they are. Alright, alright, _sheesh_. Put the fucking fork down, Pete, _I get it—"_

Eddie dials up Bill and manages to convince him to come over to theirs for dinner, and they mill around the condo —Richie flings himself to Peter with a shrill "But you have Addy, man, _surely!_ " that the latter dodges by the skin of his teeth, Bill ends up upending a glass of water over Richie's head, Eddie laughs so hard he _cries_ — 'til Mike gets back.

When Stan graduated highschool, he always knew it was going to be him and Richie, but when Mike steps through the door and melts them all with the sheer delight in his smile, he knows for certain that it's not just him and Richie. It's Bev and Ben calling them during late beery Jenga nights with their Harvard buddies, Eddie and his rainbow of polo shirts and skate shoes and long-retired skateboard. Mike's strong hands tilling the dirt of the condo's minuscule inside garden in the meek autumnal sun; Bill's gentle coos at the birds that hop towards the seeds in his palm as he flashes smiles at Stan but ends up naming them incorrectly nonetheless.

It's the little things. It's all of them or nothing.

After dinner, he gets saddled with dish duty, which is becoming increasingly normal, and also with Peter. He ends up pulling a Bev, careful not to smear his soapy hand over Peter when he nudges him him and says, "I know we don't talk, or anything, but if you like him—" _(if you like him enough, Pete)_ "—be good to him. He deserves it." He sighs and it's received with a quizzical look that he does a pretty good job of not flinching from. "You know he does."

"Are you his mom now, Uris?" But Peter caves quickly, _willingly_ , going soft. "Yeah. I know." There's a pause that stretches on for far too long before he adds, "You'll kick the shit out of me if I don't, won't you?"

Peter's ego probably couldn't survive the blow, so Stan doesn't follow him down that rabbit hole, but— after they're done, after Eddie throws some French cinema onto the TV, Peter and Mike spend the first half of the movie migrating across the couch, closer to each other. They're met with a squawk of indignation from Richie (" _Not on the fucking couch,_ he says!") but precious little else, so Stan can curl up safe into Bill, placated effortlessly by the weight of his chin over his head and the affectionate drum of his fingers against Stan's crossed arm.

"I'll _hhhhold_ your hand d-during the scary b-b-bits, if you w-w-want."

Eddie scoffs, a strangled noise. "This is an arthouse _bildungsroman_."

"Like there's nothing as scary as growing up," quips Stan, and they all have a bit of a chortle at that 'til Mike has to reach for the remote to turn the volume up, and they shut up to avoid ruining it for him.

* * *

Several things happen over the next month. For one, Stan, Peter, and Richie band together and have a mighty time teaching themselves how to cook; soon after, Mike has an even better time installing new smoke alarms after they end up nuking them trying to make vegetable tagine. (Stan eventually decides he's best on coffee-slash-affogato duty, and they get Peter and Richie on groceries permanently, figuring their shitty diets'd cancel each other out. Eddie ends up being the only one trustworthy enough for the kitchen, and, because Mike's too nice to bring it up, is the one who criticises their culinary pursuits when they manage to take toast and turn it into charcoal— see: "Was this ever toast? How the fuck did this even happen, _oh my god_ , Richie!")

Following this, Peter and Mike end up _Going Out_ , this as a concept significantly more shocking and concerning to Richie than any of the rest of them, and subsequently deserving a _Special_ , _Pointed_ emphasis when voiced aloud. There are stilted conversations had over breakfast, the awkwardness of which grows and grows 'til Eddie, with characteristic tact, blurts out "Is it, like, a sugar daddy thing?" to Bill and _half of all of Neibolt_ hears.

As it turns out, it's not that kind of thing at all; "It's a chill thing," insists Mike, in fact. They trust him in that and there's no doubt that Mike is an excellent placating presence, but still. All he has to do is skim a big soft hand over Peter's arm for all his posing and bitching to dwindle down to bashful splutters and begrudgingly averted glances. Peter's got a litany of whiny affections that he voices whenever he forgets that he does indeed share his home with not one but three other people, when he's got Mike's cheeks in his palms, squishing playfully at his smile.

"Jeez, you don't play fair, do you?" This, when Mike smooths him down into the couch to make space for Stan during movie nights, when they're curled up too close for Richie to not notice. Mike is the most— endearing out of all them, the most likely to render a man (here, _Peter_ ) into putty in his hands, and he handles the newfound power of being able to singlehandedly extinguish Peter's ego surprisingly well. None of these things, however, stop Richie from sidling up to Mike at Neibolt, leaning over the kitchen counter to titter in his ear.

"You gotta bleed him dry, man— not like that. You gotta, I mean— if he could pay our tickets, not just yours— I mean, c'mon, Mikey— you know what I mean—"

Stan walks into him with an outstretched palm, knocking him off-balance. "Leave him alone, Richie."

"I'm just saying."

" _Richie_."

Vic snickers at them from behind Mike and Stan mouths a warning _(don't encourage him, I swear)_ that he wouldn't've dared to even three months ago. Whereas it had been somewhat easy to shunt Neibolt to the back of his mind to focus on Bill and their date plans and their plans for the coming year, it's begun to make something of a comeback to his conscience, if not largely dominating it over the course of the month. It's like there'd been a dam on the city, on all the struggling students and artists trying to make their way, and Vic by playing god with job applications and their manager's absence, had broken it.

In two weeks, Neibolt is overflowing with new part-time staff: they get Frankie (or Freddy) Ross on emergency deliveries before Belch has an aneurysm, and Veronica Grogan mans the counter during the evening rushes in place of Stan. (Stan does his best to ignore what she and Corcoran get up to in the backroom, mostly for Eddie's sake— they're class pals, he learns. "She's got a _thing_ for Eddies," snorts Richie, and laughs so hard he cries as Eddie rolls his eyes back into his skull.)

One of Bill's friends from school, a young woman named Patty, gets put on kitchen duty with Gard, and Stan (and Bev, when he updates her on his life) falls for her as forcefully as a punch in the gut, staying back to talk idly with her in the backroom. (She tries to sell him on the concept of a friend-Hannukah, —"You know, like Friendsgiving, but _not_ ,"— and seems genuinely charmed when he explains that Richie's family enough to celebrate Hannukah with when he returns home.) Notably, Marcia pulls a Peter and opens up her McMansion to Betty Ripsom and a handful of other girls Stan's familiar with only through Bev and Richie, Bowie and Mueller included. Notably, Betty gets a place in Neibolt on clean-up duty, and smiles so gratefully at him whenever he passes her he can almost stand all the combined lecherous croons and eyebrow wiggles and kissy-faces all his old highschool buddies make at him when he as so much _breathes_ in Bill's general fucking direction.

"We're one big happy family," Richie slings an arm over his shoulders, nudging him with a hip. "And family fucks with you when no one else can, don't they, Stanley?" Stan catches Bill's eye, fixes him with a _kill-me_ look as Bill shakes with laughter even though Richie's not wrong. As Neibolt's heaters kick into play, as Stan's new year comes together, it becomes something of a second, or third home, an overheated haven of bad coffee and almost-friends and stupid inside jokes. A second, or third family.

Out of all Neibolt's newcomers, though, none are as remarkable as Henry fucking Bowers. Surprisingly, there are very few altercations between him and virtually everyone else, only one instance wherein he looks toward Eddie somewhat viciously after the latter'd tried to get a new fork off him, and Bill has to get up, all six-foot-two of red hair and freckles, tacky sweaters and unmistakeable presence. "W- _watch it,_ Bowers, _careful_ ," he warns, and Henry _does_.

Henry gets his court date and his retraining order, Stan hears, and as the month progresses, it becomes harder and harder to see the Henry that'd scrubbed his face into the snow and snapped Richie's glasses, though the new view that emerges isn't quite flattering either: without Vic to mother him, it seems, Henry is cumbersome, harder to train to do anything but sweep and carry in supplies from the backroom than Stan would've guessed. Eventually, it's Mike —of _course_ it's Mike— who takes pity on him and Henry becomes a fucking waiting powerhouse, his ability to balance plates across his arms second only to Mike's, and maybe Stan's on a good day and several coffees. They're not friends with him like they are with everyone else at Neibolt, but Stan thinks he catches an indistinct "— _Thanks_ , Hanlon," one afternoon at the end of their shift.

(The next time Henry tries, Vic intervenes. " _C'mon_ , Hank," he prompts, blunt but hopeful and Henry gives him an irritable look but to Stan and Mike a carefully blank, "Thank you, Mike. And Stan. But mostly Mike, for the shit with the plates—" "And the coffee, right, man?" "I'm getting to it, are you my fucking _mom_ now?")

So— that's nice. And despite the added presence of the rest of Bowers' chums, Neibolt begins to feel like something safe, something _right_ , even with Patrick coming in every other day to fret wordlessly over Henry and alternate between leering at him and sneaking him mouthfuls of coffee and pastries in between smiles and messy, dopey touches that are too fond, too mouthy, to prop up the idea they're doing anything but dating. Even with all the fucking clowns leaned against each square foot of hardwood, the constantly foggy windows, the fact that he still has to chain up his bike every morning with a double-lock, now not only to protect it from Vic but from Henry. Sometimes Moose.

The fact that Peter ends up donating a new French press and espresso machine, and pads out Stan and Richie's joint funds significantly certainly helps.

The year trudges on but Stan doesn't mind so much anymore, no longer so ruffled by the confines of his life in the spaces between family and Richie and Neibolt, reassured by how far he's come. As the day's heat simmers down, his ridiculous work uniform becomes bearable, but his now verging-on fond appraisal of Neibolt's uneven floors and shitty lighting and bizarre decor— that's all down to the others. The trees shrouding Neibolt have spit down a blanket of russet leaves the second day Stan ends up arriving late, and they crackle sleepily underneath his heels as he climbs the steps and sweeps into the building that's become such a centrepiece in his life.

Neibolt restaurant, café and organic grocers'; Neibolt, collector of wayward youth and their significant others in droves. At Vic, he gives a look of remorse, a mouthed _sorry_ that's waved off as he enters; to Richie, a glare tempered by unspoken fondness.

He's in what's come to be known as their specific corner of Neibolt, crouched over Bill and Eddie's table with his elbows pinning a stack of papers to the surface. His voice climbs in volume as Stan approaches, probably not out of any genuine distress but to be annoying. "Aw, c'mon, doesn't Singapore sound cooler than, like, London for summer?" Stan sees a map, crumpled by Richie's wild gestures. "We could go from, like, Singapore to Boryeong for a bit, 'n' then we can get to Tokyo by September, right? C'mon, guys—"

Bill wriggles his chair further into the wall, letting Stan come close. His hand finds Stan's out of habit; Stan squeezes it on the same reflex, noting the untouched cappuccino and pita in front of him, the sketchbook —a new one, by the looks of it, nowhere near as hefty as the one he'd let Stan store under his bed for lonely nights— open on his lap. Over its pages sprawl a sketch of a sparrow, a stylised rendition of a crouching Georgie in a yellow rain slicker. "Don't d-d- _diss_ London. C'mon, Richie." Stan leans into his mild voice, the space Bill makes for him.

"No one's fucking dissing London, we just spend so much time there, man. After Amsterdam, too— how the fuck's it supposed to measure up to Amsterdam? You tell me that, Bill. I don't give a fuck about the queen." Richie whips to Mike, passing to bestow upon the bread case a fresh loaf of rye. (Stan helps him out, shares his first real smile, soft and bright, with him as he works the paper bag across from Mike's solid grip to his.) "Mike, do _you_ give a fuck about the Queen?"

Stan's well on his way to the cabinet when Mike replies after a moment of careful deliberation. "Not really." Richie caws a high shrieking laugh of triumph; helpless to resist, Stan bites out a snicker as he makes his way around the counter.

Betty's uninhibited grin and her twittery _hullo, Stan_ as he shifts past her, the sweet yeasty smell of fresh bread an envelope against the bracing autumnal cold— Stan decides these are the things that make his day, week, life. (What makes up Neibolt, what makes them all.) Because he can, he sneaks a cookie out of the jar atop the counter, and savours it slow and a little smug on his way back to the others, still bickering halfheartedly. They'll figure it out, he thinks, and believes it wholeheartedly; as long as they're together, they'll make it work, even if the prospect of shoving Eddie in a suitcase along the way is becoming more and more likely.

Bill catches him by the arm on the way back ("Ah, _Sssstan_ , w-wait up,") and Richie perks up like they've given him a fucking goldmine of ammunition, from the half-eaten cookie in Stan's hand to the thin smile that opens like a daisy across his loosened mouth when Bill's eyes meet his. Eddie whacks him with a pen that'd come out of nowhere, a promising start on a distraction, and as Stan lets himself be led to the muffling dark of the backroom for the second time since learning Bill's name, he catches out of the corner of his eye Eddie's mad scramble to block Richie's line of sight out of respect. "You can't just fucking reroute, Richie! Maybe Bev and Ben give a fuck about the Queen, who fucking knows?"

"Eds, I can call them _right fucking now—"_

The closed door shuts out Mike's attempts to mediate. Comforted by the quiet, Stan slides his fingers through the familiar path across Bill's jawline, warmed by the regard he's come to recognise as loving. "You wanted to tell me something," he guesses. He can't be bothered to attempt to sound flustered by Bill dragging him away from Richie, but he can be to draw in a sharp breath when Bill wets his mouth with his tongue and— surges forward, downward, onto him.

They'd kissed for the first time tipsy on Peter's booze and drunken on victory, and it's not like they'd stopped kissing after that— they had, really, with regularity, over dishes and laundry and the pigeons that flocked around the condo's pool, quickly and gracelessly. Efficiently.

—That is not how Bill kisses him now. Bill kisses him like it'll hurt him to do anything else, deep, like a promise. It's a kiss for late nights and reunions, not brief or glancing or through a grin but deliberate. He kisses tender and slow enough that Stan can lose himself in the feeling, and he cants his head to a better angle and lets his mouth work against Bill's, blissfully unbothered by the hard door against the back of his head. Bill's hands are cupping Stan's cheeks, and they slide down to brace either side of his neck when they separate for air, drumming a gentle, placating rhythm against the skin.

Stan breathes hard, feels the long tickling brush of his eyelashes against Bill's cheek when he opens his eyes. Bill's eyes are glittering but somehow a little antsy and it occurs to Stan with a start that this must be how all the backroom business goes down— that this might just have the potential to erupt into what he's been cleaning up for a damn year. Gingerly, he pries them apart, his hands sliding from Bill's face to his shoulders. " _Wait_."

Bill's wide-eyed, uncertain in an instant, fingers going still. "S- _ssssorry_ ," he starts. "I-I just w-wanted to, you know— w-w-was th— 'it okay?"

He's not the kind of guy who backtracks, not Bill Denbrough; not the sort of person who wastes his time chasing what he doesn't honest-to-god want, and the tremor in his voice, a gentle vibration against Stan, is unbecoming on him. Stan chews the inside of his cheek, trying to will them both at ease again. (It was easier when they were kissing. Most things were.) "No, wait. I mean— yes. It was great. _Just_." _(not in here not in here not in here;_ god, the things he's seen, heard, _touched_ in this squalid little room—) "Buy me dinner first?"

A slow blink creases Bill's entire expression as realisation dawns upon him. He flushes furiously, cheeks a dim hard red in the dim cold light, and Stan grins as toothily as he ever has, unable to help himself. "I-I, I-I th-th- _think_ I have, Stan." He fixes Stan with an imploring look that he snorts at, slackening as the steady drum of Bill's fingertips at either side of him resumes.

"You have not."

"I h-h-have. Like, _twice_."

And he technically has. Stan thinks back on all those times he'd shunned Neibolt to sit at Bill's table and eat, and— hell, no wonder they'd all given him so much shit. Bill had totally bought him dinner. Those had totally been dates. "Not here," he insists, and Bill's bottom lip comes out in a lacklustre pout.

"D-d-does it really matter?"

"I think _Peter's_ bought me dinner more times than you."

A convulsion of laughter draws Bill tight against Stan, who is more pleased by the sudden decrease in distance between them than he probably should be. "A-Alright," he amends, and his eyes twinkle. "A-after Monhegan. After— I'll t-t-take you somewhere nice. Where you d-d-don't have to w-wear a uniform, _ssssswear_ ," he adds in too breathless a rush. "I p- _promise_."

Stan agrees in a murmur, smoothing their foreheads together. "After Monhegan."

He tilts his head up for a better look and ends up kissing him again. They stay like that awhile in the backroom's stifling dark, seamed together, wrapped up warm. Eventually, it's Henry who's sent to fish them out, and after throwing Stan into Bill with the force with which he boots open the door, he takes one look at them, and gets the fuck out.

The door slams, but not loud enough to veil his hasty retreat. Stan clings to Bill. Bill clings to Stan. Unsure, they stare at each other 'til from outside comes Richie's petulant wail. "Hey, Hank-the-tank, man, what's taking so long? I want details!"

"There're fucking people in there, numbnuts!"

"Yeah? That's the fucking point! Are there people fucking?"

Bill and Stan share the same knowing look and after fixing themselves up to at least look the semblance of presentability, sweep out into Neibolt hand-in-hand. Stan can feel the redness of his mouth as he purses his lips at Mike's white unrelenting smile, and his mussed collar itches at his neck, but instead of offering some stupid joke, Richie flings himself around them when he bounds up to them, almost knocking them back into Vic, out for a smoke break. He's all flailing arms, legs twisting around Bill and Stan's, flashing grin and eyes and he near topples and brings them down with him. (Fucking classic Richie.) "Lookit you! Man, you are so fucking adorable. You used protection, right? _Right?"_

His voice's invasive, clawing for attention from Neibolt's afternoon patrons, but the beaming grin he levels at Stan is all Richie, earnest and proud.

Stan's pretty sure he'll either go blind or tear up if he has to look at it any longer, so disentangles them instead, efficiently but lovingly despite the unamused line of his lips. "Sure. Wish your parents had."

"J-j-jesus, R-Richie, y-you really think Stan's th- _that_ kind of g-g-guy?"

Richie eyes their twined ( _sweaty)_ fingers, Stan's tousled hair, Bill's mouth, blooming red as a summer cherry. "Jeez, Bill. I know he is." His hand whips out and in a second, Eddie's being pulled into the fray, doing his level best to grin encouragingly at Bill and grouch at Richie at the same time. "I'm just jealous, y'know? Me 'n' Eddie— we gotta one-up you now, is all." His features twist into a kissy face; it's times like these that Stan _reallyreallyreally_ feels for Eddie Kaspbrak, first line of defence against Richie and all that he is. "C'mon, Eddie-spaghetti, let's go fuck in the backroom."

Eddie's voice cracks horrendously. "I'd _literally_ rather fucking die."

They spend the afternoon sharing a table of cooled cappuccinos and a half-loaf of fig challah from the bread cabinet, and out of some miracle or the sheer mellowing power of Bill's hand on his waist, Stan's mood doesn't dip for an instant, even when Mike calls Bev and Ben on his break and he has to go through the whole ordeal, Richie crooning and Eddie shrieking, all over again.

"Don't break him, Bill," is Ben's only real quip at the end. "You know he'll break you right back."

If that isn't a gospel truth. "Words to live by," concurs Mike sagely, and Bev snorts hard into her drink on the other side of the line.

* * *

Later that afternoon they set up a real call and it turns out neither Bev nor Ben give a fuck about the monarchy either, that Richie's going to get his way after all. (Though, they all knew that.) By the time the sun's set they're all arranged in various awkward positions around the living room, all pleasantly pacified and leaned and curled into each other as their itinerary, their entire next year, runs circles around them. Despite it all, Stan is content, warm slumped against the woolly carpet in Bill's promising embrace. Despite it all, the migraine that's been dogging him for a good year now is clearing, and when he breathes in he tastes hope. He'll be in Peru in less than four months, but before that he'll be going home to family with Richie for Hannukah. Before that, Richie'll clumsily hand-knit him a holey sweater with a skewed hannukiah on it that he'll wear despite pretending not wanting to, and even before that— he'll have Bill's hand to hold through Monhegan Island and the Tampa and Rookery Bay estuaries. Maybe they'll catch a movie, too, like highschoolers, when Stan was a mess of rigid edges and hard planes and frazzled, wild hair.

Everything's a bit of a mess— except, when he thinks about it, it really isn't. Bill's half-leaned against the couch, holding Eddie's leg atop his shoulder by his ankle, settled at a good angle for Stan to comfortably lean his head against Bill's chest. He does so, and gets a soft dewy look of equal parts inquiry and adoring cast over Bill's freckled cheeks. "Y-you okay?"

Stan wets the corner of his mouth with his tongue, swallowing. "Yeah. Can you—" He quirks his shoulders vaguely but Bill understands, lets go of Eddie's ankle in favour of rubbing easy circles into his shoulder. Everything's okay —in all honesty, it's the best it's ever been— because they're all together , they're all together, now, and Stan feels like he's holding the entire world in his hands.

Richie squints at his phone. "It says we can rent a boat 'n' shit 'round the Pontine Islands, but it's a deal for eight." He's in Eddie's lap, an absurdly uncomfortable-looking fit. When his eyes meet Stan's, they share the same lazy affectionate look. They've both come so far, and, hell. How proud he is of Richie might just rival how proud Richie is of him. "Yo, Peter! You sure you don't wanna come, man? You could totally get your zen on in Italy, or, you know. Whatever the fuck it is you do."

"—Influence, is what I do," announces Peter cheerfully as he emerges from the kitchen, "Not boats, pal. I'm an _influencer_. We don't swim." He slides into place by Mike against the coffee table, and even makes an effort to salute at Bev and Ben from Eddie's computer screen that Stan sort of appreciates.

"Like fuck you don't. It's not like we'll chuck you overboard or something, unless you're into that— _augh, fuck!"_ The outburst comes from Richie dropping his phone onto his face. Eddie heaves a tortured sigh and plucks it away from him as Richie rubs his sore nose. "Thanks, babe."

"Do we really have to do this whole boat thing? It's, like, super yuppie." Eddie's fucking with Richie now, holding his phone just out of Richie's reach, only relinquishing when Richie jabs a hand into his side and begins to tickle him. They watch him, unimpressed as Eddie grinds out a high _stop, you fuck_ and Richie laughs, hoisting his trophy into the air with his free hand.

"Newsflash, Eds, we _are_ yuppies. I mean, maybe not Mike—"

"G-good, I w-w-was gonna say—"

"Cool it, Big Bill, I'd _never_ piss on Mike like that. But Pete here, Pete's king yuppie, isn't he? We gotta try for a boat. For Pete's sake. _Ha!"_

Peter has a hand idling over Mike's knee as he kicks out at Richie, catching Bill's foot instead. "You wanna get stranded on your account? King yuppie owns your ass, Tozier. Watch it."

There's a chorus of _oohs_ on Bill and Ben's parts, a scoff on Richie's. Stan zones out, only tuning back in for Bev to suggest they _hire a bus, or something, instead— jesus, Richie._ After a while, Bill does too, and they lie there, fitting together easily. Sometimes Stan blinks and thinks he can no longer see the Bill who choked on his name and flushed lurid as a fire engine whenever Stan entered his space, and then another moment passes and he can see all of him, all of the man he half fell for and— half slid onto the tracks for, to be obliterated by the approaching train. _The freight train of love,_ Richie'd say, purring. _Of desire._

Come dinner time, they end up ordering in, as they are wont to do when Mike's been rendered too boneless to get up and direct their efforts at cooking. Bill makes a big deal about paying for Stan's eggplant pomodoro, Eddie spends a good ten minutes meticulously separating the skin off his salmon before Richie snatches it off his fork to his vocal indignation, Mike and Peter take turns trying to feed each other curry upside-down. At some point Ben and Bev cut the call to get their own dinners, but that does nothing to dull Stan's good mood; if anything, it suffuses through the condo as Richie attacks the chat with messages to Bev in between bites of Eddie's food.

They'll make it work— hell, they've managed greater feats. (Didn't he and Richie virtually have to stitch each other together again after highschool, then a year into college? Didn't they literally have to repave the paths they'd been planning for their lives since they'd been ten?) They'll figure it out, and if they don't and end up stranded, they'll be together all the same.

(And, inevitably, they'll have Peter to bail them out.)

Bill kisses his nose, unbothered by Stan's eggplant-y breath as he laughs, a little, hiccupy, thing. Richie peers at them with his strange thinking face, and everything the entire goddamn year's been leading up to comes together when he nudges Bill with a foot and asks, "Can I finally add Billy to the group chat?"

Bill's brow furrows. "Y-you have a group chat?"

"Fucking _hell_ chat," mutters Eddie, and Peter makes an enthusiastic noise of assent as Mike cringes into his dinner.

Richie makes an affronted noise. "It's a great chat. All of your favourite pals. We've had it since, like, June—"

" _Not_ since June."

"Yes, Eds. Since _June,_ " insists Richie. "Okay, maybe since fucking July, or something." He looks to Stan, glittery-eyed and mawkish and hopeful. "How 'bout it, Stan-the-man?"

Stan turns his head further into Bill's chest, burying himself in the fabric. ( _This_ is how it's meant to be. This, all of them, together like this— _this_ is what he's been waiting on since before he even knew to think about it.) "God, Richie. What do you _think_."

Richie's whoop is answer enough for just what he thinks. _"Fuckyes!_ Gang's all here, right? After, like, two hundred fucking years because it took that long for Stan to hit puberty, right? You get first pick on your nickname, Bill— nah, just kidding. How's Big Bill sound?"

Honestly, Stan should be mortified, horrified, but there are sparrows (swallows, finches, _thrushes_. Fantails in the Chatham Islands, green-billed malhokas in Kuakata) twittering outside and Bill's answering hum reverberates deep in his bones, against his ribs, against Stan's cheek in a way that Stan knows is only meant for him. "I-I-I have a f-feeling I'll regret this," he admits, and kisses Stan's eyelids as he laughs silently and surrenders into his warm, simple touch.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue + a peek at Richie's point of view.

Stan’s phone goes off when Bill is on his fourth or fifth lap. Though certainly smothering thanks to the reek of chlorine, the condo’s indoor pool was heated to a decent summer’s climate come the winter months, and enamoured by the facilities neither Stan nor Richie had ever given a second thought, (Mike, by contrast, _had his life together_ and subsequently frequented the gym with Peter, occasionally dragging them along with him to their immeasurable and vocal displeasure) Bill’d opted for a swim in the otherwise unoccupied afternoon. Sprawling over a sticky sun-lounger with Sibley’s field guide to birds in his idle hand, and clothed in the first of many clumsy Hannukah sweaters to come to offset the acrid winter cold, Stan reclines comfortably, settling on the attractive curve of Bill’s freckled shoulders over the crests of the blue water as he butterfly-strokes his way into his fifth or sixth lap. 

His phone beeps again. Stan ignores it, instead waving at Bill with a sweaty leg (he’d chosen sweatpants over shorts, underestimating the power of the condo’s indoor heating, and is currently well on his way to regretting that choice as well as every other one he’s ever made) and reaching over to the little table by his side for a drink. Outside, the sun shines high and cold, washing out the clusters of shrivelled tawny leaves over the pavement; outside, swallows and pigeons chirp lackadaisical melodies, brawling idly over scraps of food left by the condo’s other inhabitants.

Bill makes it to his sixth (or seventh) lap, his movement through the water making a pleasant rhythm to fall back into on an otherwise pleasant day. It’s a strangely peaceful picture, and Stan makes a mental note to hang up another birdfeeder off Gordon’s ( _his_ now, too) balcony— the first had been ravaged by every fucking sparrow in the general vicinity it seemed within a week, plaguing them all with wet-feather smell as they all sprawled over the carpet and argued over their final dates, times, accommodation. (”I’m not staying in a fucking love hotel, Richie! Especially not _that_ one, it doesn’t even have a website!” This had been _Eddie_. Stan’d taken his side— having to get a prescription once had shocked all the breath out of his parents; he expects they’d react worse if they found out he’d had to get another one against _syphilis_ or something.)

A breeze sneaks in through the cracks under the automatic doors and plays across the waves, its low whistle disrupting, if only briefly, the slap and crash of Bill’s arms into the water. It’s a good day— Richie and Eddie’d made breakfast, without killing any of them. Ben had sent them pictures of seven matching shirts for them to wear while overseas that Bev had made herself, initially as a joke, and then as gifts. (The former had been most evident in the loopy fire engine-red scrawls of _LOSERS CLUB a_ cross the collars, the artfully distressed hems and sequined breast pockets.) Mike'd be returning soon from his parents’ with sacks of produce to gorge on before they're forced to confine themselves to airplane food and Richie’s TV meals. Peter’d cracked not a single window or appliance whilst pitching idle screwballs at an eager-to-learn Richie.

It’s a good day. Stan can go slack, can lean his head into his chair and let his eyes slide shut, and breathe.

His phone beeps again, furiously. With possibly more melodrama than the situation demands, he shakes out his hands, and checks it.  

>  [ **trashmouth** added **billiam.denbrough97** to _cool guy club_ ]
> 
>  [ **trashmouth** set billiam.denbrough97′s nickname to _big bill_ ]  
> 
> _trashmouth_ : gangs all here  
>  _trashmouth_ : bill  
>  _trashmouth_ : bill  
>  _trashmouth_ : b b b b b ill  
>  _trashmouth_ : BILL
> 
> _eddie swaghetti:_ ohgmgygod shut the fuck up  
>  _trashmouth_ : wheres big billy  
>  _eddie swaghetti:_ i cant believe u
> 
> _haystacc_ : how do i mute the chat  
>  _trashmouth_ : excuse me  
>  _beaverley_ : richard im going to fucking kill u  
>  _beaverley_ : right here rite now  
>  _trashmouth_ : wheres bill i have so many deets  
>  _beaverley_ : i have a paper due in 2 hours please stfu  
>  _haystacc_ : omg rip  
>  _trashmouth_ : i dont ask for much i just want one (1) boy
> 
> _trashmouth_ : thats not eddie  
>  _eddie swaghetti:_ fuck u  
>  _trashmouth_ : omg  
>  _eddie swaghetti_ : id leave but ur just gonna add me again  
>  _eddie swaghetti:_ mike can you block me so he cant add me   
>  _big mikey:_ u guys....
> 
> _trashmouth:_ BILL STOP BLOWING STAN FOR 10 SECONDS   
>  _beaverley_ : tmi  
>  _haystacc_ : richie’s the dramatic gf we all need and deserve  
>  _haystacc_ : (except me tho)  
>  _beaverley_ : ♥  
>  _haystacc_ : ♥  
>  _trashmouth_ : MIKE DM STAN HE BLOCKED ME
> 
> _big mikey:_ i think they went down to the gym lol  
>  _trashmouth_ : wtf  
>  _eddie swaghetti:_ wtf  
>  _haystacc_ : tbh i respect that
> 
> _stan the man_ is typing...
> 
> _trashmouth_ : im fucking coming for u stan 
> 
> stan the man is typing...
> 
> _eddie swaghetti:_ i actually heard u burn tons of calories during sex  
>  _big mikey:_ i think peter told me that  
>  _eddie swaghetti:_ thanks i literally never wanted to know that   
>  _big mikey:_ NO NOT LIKE THAT  
>  _eddie swaghetti:_ use protection mike!!!  
>  _big mikey:_ STOP  
>  _beaverley_ : LITERALLY TMI
> 
> _stan the man_ is typing...
> 
> _trashmouth_ : THE ELEVATORS DOWN  
>  _trashmouth_ : give me 10 minutes stan  
>  _stan the man:_ I literally cannot fucking believe you

Stan smacks his phone back onto the table screen down, a treacherous little smile itching at his mouth. At the poolside, Bill breaks the surface in a spray of water, shaking his hank of hair about his face with a splutter. His elbows find the edge of the pool as he blinks up at Stan, a consummate mermaid freckled by summers long gone. “Is everyth _hhing_ okay?”

Stan replies, quite flatly, “Richie’s coming,” and Bill’s features erupt in a grin. He heaves himself out of the pool with a powerful motion Stan makes no attempt to obscure his regard of, unfolding into six-foot-two of everything Richie’d ever needed as ammunition against Stan. He whips his hair out of his eyes with a flip of the head, and Stan laughs into his fist when the violent motion only brings it ‘round again. His teeth grit into a fond smile when Bill drags his hands down his cheeks, swiping away the excess water, to regard him archly; he is so, _so_ gone.

Stan closes his book, folding his palm over the cover and spine. Lets himself have a moment to appreciate the slow arc made by a rivulet of water down Bill’s navel, into his Speedos. Acutely aware of the sudden humidity imposed by his sweater, he drags his eyes up Bill’s abdomen and chest,  _(”That’s not a hernia, Eds, these are abs!”_ comes Richie’s raucous cry in his head, and Stan mulches the inside of his cheek subtly pinked, because _Bill_ has abs, and pecs, and pretty nice quads, too, when he thinks about it and there’s no way in hell he earned those off pedalling about in Silver, _no fucking way)_ resting on his jawline (his adam’s apple bobs, mirroring Bill’s) for an indeterminable stretch of time before meeting the grin creased around his gaze.

“Wuh- _well,”_ muses Bill, and Stan cocks his head, feeling the low hum of the pool’s artificial heat in his fingertips. “Guh- _guess_ we’ll hhhave to make this qu- _quick_ , huh?”

His coy look darkens abruptly, intent glittering within, and Stan doesn’t get it ‘til he takes a measured step forward, liberating another idle cascade of pool water down his legs. “You are _not_ going to hug me.”

Bill swipes his hair off his face one last time. His grin is vibrant, affectionate, ruinous in direct contrast to the harsh but swiftly yielding line of Stan’s mouth. “Y-you can get up, or— _yuh_ -you know. Either way.”

“I’m not going to negotiate terms. I grew up with _Richie_ , Bill, do _not_ try.” Nonetheless, he’s caving, the corners of his mouth pulled taut as if on strings. Bill takes another step toward him and Stan braces his hands atop the lounger’s armrests, field guide forsaken.

“No. Y-you’re not.” Bill’s soppy little chuckle does indeed drive a stake through his heart but he’s _so_ wet and Stan is, for the most part, _dry_ , and—

“ _Bill_ —”

Bill rushes him in a mist of tepid water and chlorine, strong solid embrace bowling them both over the lounger as he wraps ‘round Stan. His chest heaves with mirth atop Stan’s (Stan can feel each subtlety of the movement, his breath, the shuddery, smitten curve of his mouth as it works kisses into the thick curls of his hair) and Stan is pitched backward but safe twined into him, shaking with hiccupy laughter as he drops like a stone.

“You— you’re getting my _sweater_ wet, you know.” Bill unwinds from around him, though the decrease in proximity is brief: his palms slide up to cup Stan’s cheeks, touch thumbing the creased joyful corners of his eyes. “I’m serious, you know it’s not a laundry day today—”

“We can t-t-take it off, if you _wuh-want,”_

Stan sucks in a high nervous breath because Bill’s hiking up his shrunken blue Hannukah sweater with crawling fingers and— blowing a hard raspberry into his navel, dissolving into jubilant, snickering laughter as Stan comes undone, the heels of his palms over his eyes, his wide beaming mouth laughing his name like a litany. “Bill, Bill, _Bill,_ I’m _not_ ticklish, you can't—”

It’s a good day. They may as well make the most of it.

* * *

Upstairs, Richie figures his phone’s been going berserk for at least a half hour by now.    

> [ **victorcriss** added **stan.uris** and **mike.h** to _Neibolt team_ ]  
> 
> [ **rich records tozier** set stan.uris’ nickname to _stan the man_ ]  
>  [ **rich records tozier** set mike.h’s nickname to _big mikey_ ]  
>  [ **rich records tozier** set victorcriss’ nickname to _vic the dick_ ]
> 
> _vic the dick:_ I fucking swear
> 
> [ **adrian the melon!** set vic the dick’s nickname to _vicky is sticky_ ]  
>  [ **the cooler eddie** set vicky is sticky’s nickname to _dicktor criss_ ]
> 
> _hank the tank:_ Lmao  
>  _ya boy gard:_ HAHAHA
> 
> _dicktor criss_ is typing...
> 
> [ **veronnie** set dicktor criss’ nickname to _vi(c)rgin_ ]
> 
> _Patty cake :):_ Guys...?  
>  _bets:_ omg
> 
> _vi(c)rgin_ is typing...
> 
> [ **rich records tozier** renamed the group _gaybolt team_ ]  
>  [ **Patty cake :)** set vi(c)rgin’s nickname to _vic_ ]
> 
> _ya boy gard:_ aw  
>  _vic_ : Fucking thank you  
>  _vic_ : Will hanlon be back by next fri  
>  _rich records tozier:_ hell be back in like 1/2 hr lol  
>  _vic_ : Can you do the evening shift tmrw  
>  _rich records tozier:_ do i have to  
>  _stan the man:_ Yeah that’s okay Vic  
>  _rich records tozier:_ STAN
> 
> _vic:_ Bitching   
>  _rich records tozier:_ STAN COME BACK
> 
> _rich records tozier:_ FUCK!!!  
>  _vic_ : Keep it out of this chat tozier  
>  _adrian the melon!:_ this chats for good vibes only
> 
> _hank the tank:_ Who set my fucking name  
>  _veronnie:_ richie lol  
>  _ya boy gard:_ ^^^  
>  _rich records tozier:_ i thought u loved me ronnie  
>  _hank the tank:_ Lol 
> 
> _hank the tank:_ Tbh i wish we were all fucking dead
> 
> _vic_ is typing...
> 
> _rich records tozier:_ what abt me hank  
>  hank the tank: What do u fucking think
> 
> _vic_ is typing...
> 
> _vic_ : Add me when you figure out whos on cleanup on xmas eve lol  
>  _vic_ : Ta ta  
>  _vic_ : !
> 
> [ _vic_ left the chat]

He turns it off with a blistering grin only growing, flowering, as he passes his and Eddie’s room (skidding across the carpet, most likely burning the underneaths of his socks or something, _because he’s got shit to do,_ has Richie fucking Tozier— he’s got goddamn places to _be)_ and catches a glimpse of the other still wrapped up tight in bed.

Conservation of momentum. _Go-go-go._ He doesn’t so much enter as he does rocket in, hurling himself onto their shared bed with a delighted _oompf_. Mind going mile a minute, he still manages to register the fond look in Eddie’s eyes as he groans out of sheer obligation, turning away from Richie to bury his head in his pillow. “Jesus christ, Richie,” this comes muffled, and Richie crouches over him with knees pinning him on either side to the bed. “Couldn’t you at least, like, _try_ to fucking leave them alone?”

“Aw, spaghetti-man. You jealous?” Despite himself, Eddie smiles; Richie sees it in the minute twitch of his very pink, very soft mouth. “I’ll be honest, Eds— Big Bill is pretty hot. I mean, those pecs—”

Eddie laughs, a strangled sound. Richie tongues the tight corners of his effervescent grin and hovers ever-closer, tangling a hand into Eddie’s stray, uncast, one to the beat of Zomboy from the kitchen. “’s a good thing I’m not a climber, huh? _You’re the only one f’me,_ Eddie, I fuckin’ _swear_ it.”

“Thought that was my mom.” (Richie almost misses the breathy “ _Dipshit_ ,” tacked on at the end.)

He turns Eddie away from his pillow, lines their foreheads together. They breathe one-two-three- _four_ counts in sync ‘til the temptation to just furl up beside Eddie and drag his hands up and down his ribs ‘til he's tickled enough to laugh and laugh freely's too much for even _Richie_  to bear. He’s got things to do, stairs to sprint down. One Stanley Uris to sort-of harass before Mike’s back home. “’s okay, I promise— I’ll get my dirt and I’ll sprint back, Eds, I promise. You won’t even know I’m gone, I _swear_ —”

“You know I _hate_ it when you call me that, I really do. God, you're ruining it, fuck off.” But at Richie he levels an earnest smile, an adoring, adorable, thing, barely teeth but wholly kissable. Richie hoots, kisses him quickly, messily, all of what he’d riled himself up for vibrating through him as Eddie separates them with his cast hand. He grins helplessly when Richie does a spectacular vault off the bed, one of his best. “You’re gonna break something, Richie.”

“The only thing that's breaking is my heart and you fucking know it. Don’t miss me too much, Eddie-spaghetti!” 

He dashes past the fridge— then, on second thought, retrieves a banana; from the freezer a punnet of Mike’s blueberries, salvaged from the throes of summer, for Eddie. He takes a bite, — _spongy_ , he notes— and then he’s out and off like a rocket down the stairs, flipping the bird at Peter and his yowl of “ _hey_ , you done your fucking dishes yet, Tozier?”

His socks slip on every second step and the cold hits him like a sledgehammer, ( _no sweatpants, no problem, right, Rich?_ Eddie’s sort of right— he _is_ kind of a fucking idiot) but its laughter that twists out of the indoor pool as he nears its building, and that’s all it takes for a grin, part lech and part proud parent and part _motherfucking cryptid hunter_ , to blossom from his livened mouth.

Fishing his phone from his pocket, he draws in with Bev’s number dialled, sorting comebacks and quips one by one, foot tapping restlessly to the tune of giggling inside. “Bev, hey. Wanna see somethin’ cute? _Rot your teeth out_ cute? You’re _really_ gonna want to fucking see this.”

**Author's Note:**

> just a few things:
> 
> 1) i know i refer to the manager and owner pretty rarely and then interchangeably, but they're probably 2017 and 1990 pennywise respectively. imagine having pennywise as your boss. 
> 
> 2) there are two cafe/restaurants that neibolt is based off here, and they actually exist, they're called scarecrow and little bird.
> 
> 3) the bakery/dessert place that marcia works at is... sort of influenced by milse.
> 
> 4) i only reference them once, but patrick's $600 doc martens are from the vetements x doc collab. 
> 
> 5) i really love birds.
> 
> 6) sorry for typos.
> 
> i'm thinking of writing more to do with this verse in specifically richie, (especially concerning his history with stan, and his relationship with eddie) bev, bill, (what happened to georgie??) and mike's perspectives. let me know what you think!


End file.
